I'm a Doctor (Doctor of Chiropractic)
Honest truth: the Medical Industry wants to make a society of dependant sheep. Sheep that go for their regular checkups (ca-ching) and buy the Big Pharma meds (ca-ching)
Eat well, exercise and get regular chiropractic adjustments to keep your nervous system functioning at peak efficiency. You'll never get heart disease or cancer.
I'm a Doctor (Doctor of Medicine)
Stop being paranoid and naive...
Many chiropractors in my region (Florida) charge "sheep" high out of pocket fees for recurrent alignments (cha-ching) and peddle all sorts of Big Nutraceutical supplements (cha-ching).
Eat well, exercise, don't smoke, and come from a good gene pool, and hopefully you will be less likely to get heart disease and cancer.
Like others in the/. community, I am in the research area. I am a physician in a cardiovascular imaging lab. The university-wide computing solution has been Dell-branded desktops for years. Save for a few niche groups, most researchers here are Windows-tied. Part of our problem is that many of the developers of imaging and analysis software packages have no desire to support OSX (nor do they plan to based on my phone calls). The dual boot option is very exciting for us because it allows for a possible laboratory wide migration to a powerful platform for our primary tasks. ProSolv (cardiac imaging analysis) and SAS (statistical analysis) would be still tied to the XP partition. If a virtualization solution that could perform as well as the XP native platform existed, that would likely be the final impetus to switch- it would be somewhat cumbersome to keep switching between OSs. (BTW- no one should suggest SPSS Base for OSX because SPSS blows).
Your argument is flawed and ethically problematic. At our institution, the animal studies committee is very careful and diligent that every mouse that is killed for research purposes is accounted for and euthanized in the most "humane" fashion possible. Moreover, research must be conducted with adequate anesthesia with awareness that these creatures do feel pain, and are most definitely aware of their surroundings.
We as researchers strive to find a model for disease that does not require sacrificing other organisms, yet no other non-animal models exist that can come close to predicting human phenotypic/genotypic relationships. I take no pleasure in killing these laboratory grown creatures.
I keep hearing about the few rare VRSA isolates found, mostly in labs. In my mind, this is the more frightening, yet not realized, threat that faces the hospital community. I am always surprised if staph aureus is sensitive to methicillin/oxacillin nowadays- nearly every isolate is resistant. Moreover, the incidence of community-acquired MRSA/ORSA is skyrocketing in our area (Midwest)- beyond athletes or military personnel, but rather to routine individuals. Linezolid is not nearly restricted as it should be. I predict in about 5 to 10 years, VRSA will be widespread. Hopefully, non-antibiotic therapies will be available. A classic example is bacteriophage therapy, which has been around since the 40's (and used in Russia), but lost ground in research to the rise of antibiotic therapies. Engineered viruses may prove crucial in the future battle with these organisms.
Heh-
I'd like to see the common hospital bacteria that become resistant to alcohol, chlorhexidine, or bleach. Most disinfecting or cleaning agents eradicate in a manner that is quite toxic to most living tissues (hence the earlier comment). Acquiring the genetic data necessary to become resistant to these agents, which would likely require an evolution into extremely tough sporulated forms, is unlikely and improbable.
I am a very novice "audiophile"- I have not gone to such great lengths as to upgrade the capacitors in my poweramp or elevate my 8 gauge speaker cable with bullshit oak lifts to reduce vibrations from the floor. That being said, I started many years ago with a 2.1 setup and over the years have slowly upgraded to a 7.1 NHT setup. Optimal sound of course come from proper positioning. I recall an article from I think Thomasson of THX fame who reported that the optimal sound setup for home theater was a crazy 10.4 setup- with a dizzying diagram of intricately placed speakers. I do have a house with modest sized living room/home theater room. The addition of the two additional rear channels certainly added a bit of liveliness to the moviewatching experience(especially when coupled with my thunderdous PC11 5.5 foot tall cylinder sub). That being said, I cannot stress the importance of quality components, especially the 2 front speakers and the center channel. If you do not watch movies- then this whole issue is moot anyway- a 2 speaker setup is more than sufficient (albeit required for music aficionados). The primary vocalizations from people on screen comes through the center channel which means a solid center channel is a must, complemented by the the fronts. Some would argue that 2 subs should be paired to complement the fronts, but a single sub placed in the correct corner of a room should fill it quite nicely to get the lows. As the article stated, most DVD/SACDs, etc. do not capitalize on the extra rear channels (most high-end receivers do a nice fake duplication for the 6-9 channels), and very little information is sent there anyway other than the low acoustic quality surround effects. But I have noticed that those extra channels do create the illusion of immersion if you have even a medium sized room to work with.
Most modern pacemakers can last 8-10 years before a generator change depending on whether a patient is "pacer-dependent" or not. Obviously, if they are pacing all the time, you will see a more rapid drop in voltage on device interrogation. Pacemaker implantation and generator change is a minor procedure- typically outpatient and perhaps with an overnight stay. After all, the pacemaker itself is in a subcutaneous pocket near the shoulder and can be accesses with a simple incision/dissection with local anesthesia. Now an ICD (implantable cardiac defibrillator) +/- biventricular pacemaker obviously has a lower lifespan if it discharges, especially if it discharges frequently (A.K.A. a patient that comes in VT storm and a device that is literally cooking their chest from firing nonstop). Now that subcutaneous leads (as opposed to intracardiac) are being developed with the potential for significantly lower energy required for defibrillation threshold, the lifespan of existing batteries will be much longer.
With regard to transcutaneous charging technology, I have seen it used for ventricular assist devices, where infection is a serious risk (as most VADs have a drive line coming out of a patient's skin to an external power source). My understanding is that this is somewhat cumbersome as skin is a potent resistor. I am curious to see how they suggest to overcome these challenges.
Oh -- and from what I hear, this particular system is much despised by most of the MDs who use it.
As a physician who uses the CPRS Vista system quite frequently, I have to disagree. I work at the second largest hospital in the country which currently supports at least 5 different EMR systems, of which only one supports physician order entry (POE) (and that's in the ER only). A crappy POE system will be rolled out over the next few years to supposedly help reduce medication errors and reduce the truckloads of paper documentation that we currently use to remain compliant with mundane JCAHO regulations. However, a full EMR- with electronic notes/daily documentation is still not in place and is still a few years away. The current systems are a hodgepodge of different applications poorly tied together and are exceedingly slow and difficult to access - a poor testament for what is supposed to be one of the most advanced medical centers in the world.
When I work at the VA down the street, the medical center there might as well be a third world country with third world medicine, but some time traveller left behind some remnants of future technology when it comes POE and documentation. The system, while plain and simple, is very fast and relatively easy to use. Sure it could be tweaked, but I will take ready access over bells and whistles any day. Vanderbilt Medical Center, a leader in EMR design, has a similar home grown system that is also very easy to use and is superior IMO. But CPRS Vista is essentially free- arcane, but free.
So instead, our hospital system will pay yet another technology vendor millions of dollars for a product that does the same thing as Vista, and probably much slower and less reliably.
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I'm a Doctor (Doctor of Chiropractic) Honest truth: the Medical Industry wants to make a society of dependant sheep. Sheep that go for their regular checkups (ca-ching) and buy the Big Pharma meds (ca-ching) Eat well, exercise and get regular chiropractic adjustments to keep your nervous system functioning at peak efficiency. You'll never get heart disease or cancer.
I'm a Doctor (Doctor of Medicine) Stop being paranoid and naive... Many chiropractors in my region (Florida) charge "sheep" high out of pocket fees for recurrent alignments (cha-ching) and peddle all sorts of Big Nutraceutical supplements (cha-ching). Eat well, exercise, don't smoke, and come from a good gene pool, and hopefully you will be less likely to get heart disease and cancer.
I guess that makes hammerhead sharks the "Best" guys.
Like others in the /. community, I am in the research area. I am a physician in a cardiovascular imaging lab. The university-wide computing solution has been Dell-branded desktops for years. Save for a few niche groups, most researchers here are Windows-tied. Part of our problem is that many of the developers of imaging and analysis software packages have no desire to support OSX (nor do they plan to based on my phone calls). The dual boot option is very exciting for us because it allows for a possible laboratory wide migration to a powerful platform for our primary tasks. ProSolv (cardiac imaging analysis) and SAS (statistical analysis) would be still tied to the XP partition. If a virtualization solution that could perform as well as the XP native platform existed, that would likely be the final impetus to switch- it would be somewhat cumbersome to keep switching between OSs. (BTW- no one should suggest SPSS Base for OSX because SPSS blows).
Looks like Bill shops at IKEA. Nothing like low-rate Blonde Melamine furniture to scream Scandinavian/Bauhaus style on a budget.
Your argument is flawed and ethically problematic. At our institution, the animal studies committee is very careful and diligent that every mouse that is killed for research purposes is accounted for and euthanized in the most "humane" fashion possible. Moreover, research must be conducted with adequate anesthesia with awareness that these creatures do feel pain, and are most definitely aware of their surroundings. We as researchers strive to find a model for disease that does not require sacrificing other organisms, yet no other non-animal models exist that can come close to predicting human phenotypic/genotypic relationships. I take no pleasure in killing these laboratory grown creatures.
I keep hearing about the few rare VRSA isolates found, mostly in labs. In my mind, this is the more frightening, yet not realized, threat that faces the hospital community. I am always surprised if staph aureus is sensitive to methicillin/oxacillin nowadays- nearly every isolate is resistant. Moreover, the incidence of community-acquired MRSA/ORSA is skyrocketing in our area (Midwest)- beyond athletes or military personnel, but rather to routine individuals. Linezolid is not nearly restricted as it should be. I predict in about 5 to 10 years, VRSA will be widespread. Hopefully, non-antibiotic therapies will be available. A classic example is bacteriophage therapy, which has been around since the 40's (and used in Russia), but lost ground in research to the rise of antibiotic therapies. Engineered viruses may prove crucial in the future battle with these organisms.
Heh- I'd like to see the common hospital bacteria that become resistant to alcohol, chlorhexidine, or bleach. Most disinfecting or cleaning agents eradicate in a manner that is quite toxic to most living tissues (hence the earlier comment). Acquiring the genetic data necessary to become resistant to these agents, which would likely require an evolution into extremely tough sporulated forms, is unlikely and improbable.
I am a very novice "audiophile"- I have not gone to such great lengths as to upgrade the capacitors in my poweramp or elevate my 8 gauge speaker cable with bullshit oak lifts to reduce vibrations from the floor. That being said, I started many years ago with a 2.1 setup and over the years have slowly upgraded to a 7.1 NHT setup. Optimal sound of course come from proper positioning. I recall an article from I think Thomasson of THX fame who reported that the optimal sound setup for home theater was a crazy 10.4 setup- with a dizzying diagram of intricately placed speakers. I do have a house with modest sized living room/home theater room. The addition of the two additional rear channels certainly added a bit of liveliness to the moviewatching experience(especially when coupled with my thunderdous PC11 5.5 foot tall cylinder sub). That being said, I cannot stress the importance of quality components, especially the 2 front speakers and the center channel. If you do not watch movies- then this whole issue is moot anyway- a 2 speaker setup is more than sufficient (albeit required for music aficionados). The primary vocalizations from people on screen comes through the center channel which means a solid center channel is a must, complemented by the the fronts. Some would argue that 2 subs should be paired to complement the fronts, but a single sub placed in the correct corner of a room should fill it quite nicely to get the lows. As the article stated, most DVD/SACDs, etc. do not capitalize on the extra rear channels (most high-end receivers do a nice fake duplication for the 6-9 channels), and very little information is sent there anyway other than the low acoustic quality surround effects. But I have noticed that those extra channels do create the illusion of immersion if you have even a medium sized room to work with.
Modded +5 Insightful??? Did anyone actually read his post?
With regard to transcutaneous charging technology, I have seen it used for ventricular assist devices, where infection is a serious risk (as most VADs have a drive line coming out of a patient's skin to an external power source). My understanding is that this is somewhat cumbersome as skin is a potent resistor. I am curious to see how they suggest to overcome these challenges.
As a physician who uses the CPRS Vista system quite frequently, I have to disagree. I work at the second largest hospital in the country which currently supports at least 5 different EMR systems, of which only one supports physician order entry (POE) (and that's in the ER only). A crappy POE system will be rolled out over the next few years to supposedly help reduce medication errors and reduce the truckloads of paper documentation that we currently use to remain compliant with mundane JCAHO regulations. However, a full EMR- with electronic notes/daily documentation is still not in place and is still a few years away. The current systems are a hodgepodge of different applications poorly tied together and are exceedingly slow and difficult to access - a poor testament for what is supposed to be one of the most advanced medical centers in the world.
When I work at the VA down the street, the medical center there might as well be a third world country with third world medicine, but some time traveller left behind some remnants of future technology when it comes POE and documentation. The system, while plain and simple, is very fast and relatively easy to use. Sure it could be tweaked, but I will take ready access over bells and whistles any day. Vanderbilt Medical Center, a leader in EMR design, has a similar home grown system that is also very easy to use and is superior IMO. But CPRS Vista is essentially free- arcane, but free.
So instead, our hospital system will pay yet another technology vendor millions of dollars for a product that does the same thing as Vista, and probably much slower and less reliably.