Death
ddobbs | October 14, 2009"The Brite Nightgown," from Donald Fagen's First And Only Solo Tour (2006) -
Dana Blankenhorn, who brings a distinctive mix of skepticism, intelligence, and gruff impatience to his flu coverage, digests some unsettling stats from the JAMA articles. Some of his highlights:
* Health care workers get little protection from fancy masks. Workers given ordinary medical masks had a nearly 1 in 4 chance of getting the disease. The same for those given fancy N95 fitted masks. Many medical workers have been resisting getting the shot.
* Hospitals must be prepared for extraordinary burdens in the…
mikethemadbiologist | August 26, 2009Senator Kennedy died late last night. From his family:
"We've lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever.
"We thank everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and everyone who stood with him for so many years in his tireless march for progress toward justice, fairness and opportunity for all.
"He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it.
"He always believed that our best days were still ahead, but it's hard to imagine any of them…
terrasig | August 24, 2009
Propofol.
For further information and detailed background, please see our previous post on this injectable anesthetic agent known as propofol or Diprivan®.
This L.A. Times article today also has a concise timeline of the events leading to the death of Michael Jackson
terrasig | June 26, 2009AOL's celebrity gossip page TMZ.com was first yesterday to report Michael Jackson's death, in part due to their direct line to one or more Jackson family members.
They appear to have had another scoop today in referencing a family member who reported that Mr Jackson had received an injection of the opioid analgesic, Demerol (meperidine), at 11:30 am yesterday. It is not clear whether this shot was administered by Dr Conrad Murray, the physician who was present when the 911 call was made to L.A. dispatchers. (Non-US readers may also refer to meperidine as pethidine or the trade name, Pethadol…
bioephemera | June 10, 2009While I was out of town this weekend, one of my friends lost her dog. As I read over the many caring comments on her Facebook page, it struck me how difficult it is to express condolences - especially on the loss of a pet. Like many others, I ended up simply saying "I'm sorry."
The significance of the relationship between pet and person is often minimized, even though we know that the unconditional love supplied by a pet can do astonishing things for human mental and physical health. Personally, I don't believe animals have souls, but neither do I believe they are soulless automatons. Cats…
awild | June 7, 2009I sometimes get requests for stylistic pictures of dead ants. From pest control industry folks, usually. And I always have to beg off. Somehow, with my global image library of hundreds of different ant species, I've had nothing but live insects. Dead bugs never held much aesthetic appeal, I guess.
Well, Pest Control People. Just for you I've sold out. Here, at last, is your ex-ant.
(Incidentally, this ant wasn't even dead. It was knocked out with CO2 and walked off 5 minutes later.)
terrasig | May 20, 2009About four years ago, I started reading blogs. One of those, Respectful Insolence, was written by a surgical oncologist who writes under the name, Orac. This was before he was asked to be at ScienceBlogs and about a year before Terra Sig was. He has since become my friend and colleague.
Orac is one of the most consistently excellent medical bloggers in the sci/med blogosphere. But today's post resonated exceptionally with me. In discussing the ongoing case of Daniel Hauser, a young man with Hodgkin's lymphoma whose parents are fighting to withhold his chemotherapy, Orac writes a concise,…
edyong | May 6, 2009We recognise dead people by the absence of signals that indicate life - movement, responsiveness, pulses, brain activity, and so on. The Argentine ant does the same, but its signal is a chemical one. Throughout its life, an ant uses chemicals in its skin to automatically send out a message to its nest-mates, saying "I'm alive. Don't throw me out." When it dies, these "chemicals of life" fade away, and their bodies are evicted.
Social insects like ants and honeybees are fastidious about their colony's tidiness. If any individuals die, they're quickly removed and thrown away in one of the…
grrlscientist | April 19, 2009tags: Christians, religion, death, humor, streaming video
A scientific study recently found that Christians are more likely to have aggressive medical care at the end of their lives -- why is that if heaven is so wonderful? In this video, Edward Current, the defender of Christianity everywhere, explains why Christians do not want to go to heaven early [3:17]
razib | April 1, 2009Richard Dawkins: 'There is something illogical about the fear of death':
The comfort of a dying soldier, the succour for a grieving mother or belief in the after-life of a widower - is it still possible to see the utility of certain psychological aspects in some religious beliefs or customs? [Interviewer - R]
I do see a psychological value, if it does have a real value. I would not wish to be the person who destroys that person's psychological succour. I would not compromise with my public speaking out in the public forum and writing. But if I was visiting someone who was recently bereaved, I…
terrasig | March 31, 2009A little over a week ago, we posted on the very sad story of the accidental death of a University of Colorado sophomore from ingesting poppy seed tea. The poppy, Papaver somniferum, is the commercial source for prescription narcotic painkillers such as morphine and codeine. The seeds can be had online and in retail stores. The plants can often be grown if these seeds are not roasted or otherwise sterilized.
I had originally suspected that the CU-Boulder student had not used poppy seed tea but rather some other decoction of the plant itself. I had always contended that the seeds did not…
terrasig | March 15, 2009I am truly humbled by reader response to my Thursday post on the 12th anniversary of my father's death. What began as a simple journaling exercise interspersed with some great photos provided by my sister has become one of my most highly-read and most-commented posts.
I don't want to comment too much lest I take away what this post has meant to me and others. But for background, this is something that I had intended to write for the 10th anniversary of Dad's passing. However, I had only been with ScienceBlogs for a few months and wasn't yet in a position to write so frankly and personally…
terrasig | December 10, 2008I have something like ten posts already started and none of them done due to that silly work thing. I don't know how the other people around ScienceBlogs actually get posts up with such frequency.
In the meantime, I had a thought while conversing with Alice Pawley and Suzanne Franks about their session at the upcoming ScienceOnline'09 unconference on gender issues in science where I, brave one that I am, will represent all men and discuss how we all think we boys can be allies.
In the meantime, please re-read Alice's post on the recent anniversary of the Montreal Massacre:
On December 6,…
grrlscientist | October 31, 2008tags: bird behavior, emotional lives of animals, ornithology, birds, avian, photoessay
The bird calls out after realising that his (her?) mate is dead
Image: Wilson Hsu, AbuNawaf.com [larger view].
There are many inexplicable and tragic events in nature, yet few are captured on film. Here is an interesting series of photographs depicting a pair of swallows, Hirundo rustica (known as the Barn Swallow in the United States). In this series of images, we watch the story that unfolds after one of the birds was fatally injured, yet the bird's mate remains nearby, delivering food or water and…
terrasig | September 20, 2008Dr Ernest Eliel, a past-president of the American Chemical Society, passed away in Chapel Hill, NC, on Thursday evening. Dr Eliel was 86.
His obituary notes:
Born December 28, 1921, in Cologne, Germany, Dr. Eliel was the son of the late Oskar and Luise Tietz Eliel. He moved to the United States in 1946, and received a Ph.D degree from the University of IL at Urbana-Champaign in 1948. Dr. Eliel lived in South Bend, IN, where he taught at the University of Notre Dame from 1948 until 1972, at which time he moved to Chapel Hill, where he was the W.R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Chemistry at the…
terrasig | September 18, 2008Tom Levenson at The Inverse Square blog recently lost his uncle and godfather, Daniel D Levenson.
I've been lucky enough to meet Tom once and yet he still answers my e-mails. Beyond his current position as a prof in the MIT Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Tom is a prolific author and award-winning producer of several science documentaries.
This is what you get when a professional writer lovingly remembers a wonderful and influential man whose suffering has finally ended.
Tom asks that Uncle Dan be remembered by a memorial donation to Mazon.
gregladen | June 23, 2008Or older. In fact, my hero is dead.
For me, George Carlin was inspirational, influential, even formative, on a personal level. For society, Carlin was extraordinarily important. He should have gotten a Nobel for making people think even when they did not want to. He was about to be awarded the annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Even the news media is calling him a "hero" of the counter culture. Since the new media is staffed by the remnants of the counter culture, dired out, that is saying something (subtly).
He apparently died of heart failure. He was 71.
From one writeup…
terrasig | June 23, 2008John Lynch let us know last evening about Carlin's passing on Sunday. I think you'll find many people sharing their favorite George Carlin moments today. I found him to be remarkably observant on how language is used to deal with social and political issues ("shell shock" became "battle fatigue" which then became "post-traumatic stress disorder').
The man also clearly had some interests in pharmacology, particularly natural products - from the AP report:
Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the "…
grrlscientist | May 17, 2008tags: Big Brown, horseracing, Preakness Stakes, Triple Crown
Kent Desmoreaux rides Big Brown across the finish line at the 2008 Preakness Stakes today. The horse's ears are pricked forward, indicating that he is running easily.
Image: Jonathan Ernst (Reuters).
Odds-on favorite and Kentucky Derby winner, Big Brown, won the Preakness Stakes today by 5 1/4 lengths. This victory makes him 2/3rds of the way to winning horse racing's Triple Crown. But Big Brown's win isn't really news, if you ask me, since he is the only talented living 3-year-old racehorse in America this year, so of course he…
awild | April 14, 2008
I can't imagine a more unpleasant way to go. This poor oleander aphid (Aphis nerii) has its innards sucked out by a hoverfly larva.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
MT-24EX flash diffused through tracing paper
levels adjusted in Photoshop.