Kamen is an incredible genius and we need more people like him and those on his team. If the Government wants to get the economy going stop putting money into the dumbass automakers and banks. Put lots of money into Kamen and people/companies like them who are solving incredibly challenging problems that will offer many benefits to mankind. Dean Kamen’s Robotic “Luke” Arm |
| Segway inventor Dean Kamen is looking to re-invent the prosthetic arm. IEEE Spectrum caught up with Kamen and one of his “test pilots,” to see the robotic arm (named after Luke Skywalker’s articfic… Read more at www.youtube.com |
It does make more sense, especially the communications portion. Medical School: Anatomy’s Out, Systems Biology’s In |
 Sending students to the anatomy lab to dissect a cadaver in their first week of medical school may be a fading ritual. At Georgetown, students spend a few months in courses called “Physician-Patient Communication” and “Social and Cultural Issues in Health Care” before they start with the cutting — and when they do get to dissection, it’s in a unit on limbs, not in an old-school anatomy class.
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That’s one example of the way med schools are shuffling their curricula to try to catch up with the changing demands — both scientific and cultural — doctors face, the Washington Post reports. |
In a new case-based teaching method at Johns Hopkins, students might have a unit on heart disease where they look at sample heart attack cases to understand the genetics of heart disease, the physiology of the heart, medication options, costs and benefits of various treatments and how environment can affect heart disease risks, the Post says. Read more at blogs.wsj.com |
No paid sick leave hampers US swine flu battle |
WASHINGTON — Along with scarce vaccine and shrinking stocks of antivirals, the United States faces another enemy in the fight against swine flu: workers who go to work when they’re ill because they don’t get paid sick leave. |
The A(H1N1) virus “is causing an emergency for workers and families across the country,” Democratic Senator Chris Dodd told a Senate subcommittee hearing Tuesday on paid sick leave in a time of pandemic flu. |
The United States is one of only five countries in the world without a national policy on paid sick leave, Dodd said. |
“We’re in the company — and I say this respectfully of these countries — of Lesotho, Liberia, Papua-New Guinea and Swaziland. Those countries and the United States are the five that don’t have paid sick leave,” Dodd said. Read more at www.google.com |
Scientists say curry compound kills cancer cells |
LONDON (Reuters) - A molecule found in a curry ingredient can kill esophageal cancer cells in the laboratory, suggesting it might be developed as an anti-cancer treatment, scientists said on Wednesday. |
Researchers at the Cork Cancer Research Center in Ireland treated esophageal cancer cells with curcumin — a chemical found in the spice turmeric, which gives curries a distinctive yellow color — and found it started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours. |
The cells also began to digest themselves, they said in a study published in the British Journal of Cancer. |
Previous scientific studies have suggested curcumin can suppress tumors and that people who eat lots of curry may be less prone to the disease, although curcumin loses its anti-cancer attributes quickly when ingested. Read more at www.reuters.com |
Game is up for health insurers |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Health insurance companies are aggressively raising premiums at the same time they are fighting to stop the creation of public non-profit funds that would give them serious competition. |
This foolish effort to pad profits before any healthcare overhaul gets passed ought to backfire. The so-called public option was already gathering support despite claims by conservatives that it would lead to a government takeover of health care. |
With costs rising like this, it is remarkable how many supporters the insurers have in Congress. Even the best of the companies are a pain to deal with. |
The for-profit insurance companies are a unique feature of the U.S. health care system. No other developed country has them, and their existence is a key reason Americans spend a much higher share of their national income on health care — while leaving many people uninsured. Read more at www.reuters.com |
Cancers Can Vanish Without Treatment, but How?
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Call it the arrow of cancer. Like the arrow of time, it was supposed to point in one direction. Cancers grew and worsened. |
| But as a paper in The Journal of the American Medical Association noted last week, data from more than two decades of screening for breast and prostate cancer call that view into question. Besides finding tumors that would be lethal if left untreated, screening appears to be finding many small tumors that would not be a problem if they were left alone, undiscovered by screening. They were destined to stop growing on their own or shrink, or even, at least in the case of some breast cancers, disappear. |
It was a view that was hard for some cancer doctors and researchers to accept. But some of the skeptics have changed their minds and decided that, contrary as it seems to everything they had thought, cancers can disappear on their own. Read more at www.nytimes.com |
The Human Body Is Built for Distance
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BASIC FOOTWEAR Arnulfo Quimare, a Tarahumara Indian who is a champion distance runner, laces up his sandals for a 50-mile race on canyon trails.
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Does running a marathon push the body further than it is meant to go? |
The conventional wisdom is that distance running leads to debilitating wear and tear, especially on the joints. But that hasn’t stopped runners from flocking to starting lines in record numbers. |
| In “Born to Run” (Knopf), Christopher McDougall, an avid runner who had been vexed by injuries, explores the world of the Tarahumara Indians of MexicoRead more at www.nytimes.com |
Another reason insurance companies suck! The Case of the Missing Assistant Surgeon |
Do you know how many people are at the table with gloves on, when you have an operation? There’s the surgeon and a scrub nurse, of course. A surgical tech may be there too, suctioning up those queasy fluids, holding the arm or leg we’re working on, cutting sutures and holding retractors. But you have seen enough medical shows to know there’s also always at least one other doctor present. We may not engage in the same kind of dramatic medical banter that fictional surgeons do (like flying a passenger jet, safe surgery should be a little bit boring), but that second doctor — the assistant surgeon — should be in the operating room for all major procedures. Read more at www.time.com |
UCLA Study: The Internet Is Altering Our Brains |
| Adults with little Internet experience show changes in their brain activity after just one week online, a new study finds. |
The results suggest Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults. |
UCLA Study: The Internet Is Altering Our Brains |
| Adults with little Internet experience show changes in their brain activity after just one week online, a new study finds. |
The results suggest Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults. |
As the brain ages, a number of structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, or decay, reductions in cell activity and increases in complex things like deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which can impact cognitive function. Read more at www.foxnews.com |
Being a parent with one of mine having a peanut allergy, this is commendable of this kid to push forth with this. Commentary: Boy pushes Congress for food allergy guidelines |
Editor’s note: CNN.com profiled Kyle Graddy last summer when he attended his first pro-baseball game during a peanut-free night in Birmingham, Alabama. Three million U.S. children suffer allergies to peanuts and other foods, which can cause anaphylaxis and — if left untreated — death. Last week, Graddy traveled to Washington to lobby for legislation that would create voluntary national guidelines on how schools deal with students with food allergies. |
WASHINGTON (CNN) — My name is Kyle Graddy. I’m 9 years old and I have a peanut allergy. I traveled to Washington last week to help myself and other kids with food allergies to have a safer experience at school. |
I represented the state of Alabama in the Kids’ Congress on Capitol Hill sponsored by the Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network. Read more at www.cnn.com |
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Dean Kamen’s Robotic “Luke” Arm
