When Tom Packard began suffering from kidney failure, his fiancee offered to give him one of her kidneys. But Packard, a 65-year-old Manhattan bank executive, and Ann Heavner, 59, weren't a compatible match. After two more donors fell through, the couple showed up in the office of Dr. Lloyd Ratner, director of renal and pancreatic transplantation at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. Ratner punched a few keywords into his personal database and found a 71-year-old New Jersey man who could use Heavner's kidney—and whose 62-year-old wife could give hers to Packard.

So, the two couples made a deal. Last spring, in four operating rooms, four surgeons simultaneously conducted what's known as a "kidney swap." All four patients have recovered. Last month, they spent Thanksgiving together.

It turns out that looking at the aggregation of billions of search queries people type into Google reveals something about our curiosity, our thirst for news, and perhaps even our desires. Considering all that has occurred in 2005, we thought it would be interesting to study just a few of the significant events, and names that make this a memorable year. (We’ll leave it to the historians to determine which ones are lasting and which ephemeral.) We hope you enjoy this selective view of our collective year.

The name of a cancer-causing gene has been changed from "Pokemon" to Zbtb7 after Pokemon USA threatened legal action to keep scientists from referring to the gene by the game's name, according to an article in science journal Nature.

In January's issue, geneticist Pier Paolo Pandolfi of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York describes the cancer-causing POK erythroid myeloid ontogenic gene, calling it Pokemon.

The gene in question is part of the POK gene family that encodes proteins that turn off other genes. POK proteins are critical in embryonic development, cellular differentiation and oncogenesis, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Aberrant transcriptional repression through chromatin remodelling and histone deacetylation has been postulated to represent a driving force underlying tumorigenesis because histone deacetylase inhibitors have been found to be effective in cancer treatment. However, the molecular mechanisms by which transcriptional derepression would be linked to tumour suppression are poorly understood. Here we identify the transcriptional repressor Pokemon (encoded by the Zbtb7 gene) as a critical factor in oncogenesis. Mouse embryonic fibroblasts lacking Zbtb7 are completely refractory to oncogene-mediated cellular transformation. Conversely, Pokemon overexpression leads to overt oncogenic transformation both in vitro and in vivo in transgenic mice. Pokemon can specifically repress the transcription of the tumour suppressor gene ARF through direct binding. We find that Pokemon is aberrantly overexpressed in human cancers and that its expression levels predict biological behaviour and clinical outcome. Pokemon's critical role in cellular transformation makes it an attractive target for therapeutic intervention.

U.S. customs agents intercepted more than 50 shipments of counterfeit Tamiflu, the antiviral flu drug, marking the first such seizures in the U.S. The first package was intercepted Nov. 26 at an air-mail facility near San Francisco International Airport, said Roxanne Hercules, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Since then, agents have seized 51 separate packages, each containing up to 50 counterfeit capsules labeled generic Tamiflu. The fake drugs had none of Tamiflu's active ingredients, and officials were running tests to determine what the capsules did contain.

"my perfect Christmas moment in New York City"

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been shot dead, according to Wikipedia, the online, up-to-the-minute encyclopedia.

Apparently, the assassin was a "friend" of the victim of a recent controversy which ironically, smeared former Robert F Kennedy aid John Seigenthaler as a suspect in the assassination of both Kennedy brothers. That claim, which the site carried for several months, along with the assertion that Seigenthaler had lived in Russia, was eventually proved false.

"At 18:54 EST on December 12, John Seigenthaler's wife, who was infuriated at Wikipedia regarding the recent scandal regarding his role in the Kennedy Assassination, came into the house, where Jim was having dinner. Wearing a mask, he [sic] shot him three times in the head and ran," reported the online reference source.

Cheryl DeHart Mollison's father gave her life -- and on Sept. 7, she helped extend his.

Mollison donated one of her kidneys to her 80-year-old father, Ted DeHart, while he was suffering from chronic kidney failure. Without the transplant, DeHart was facing dialysis.

"I said, 'No, we're not going that route," Mollison said. "We're doing the transplant."

Watching scenes of fists flying over an LCD monitor during a holiday sale made me wonder about stress, and how one can maintain a holiday spirit at a stressful time of year. According to Stedman's Medical Dictionary, it's stress, not the holidays, that make the body react to "forces of a deleterious nature that disturb its normal physiologic equilibrium." That sounds bad.

There is extensive research that confirms the harmful effects of stress when it occurs continuously with out the relaxation phase. In the international INTERHEART study, patients with a first heart attack reported significantly more stress in financial, home and work-related situations than the control studies. In another study of 1055 medical students who were followed for 36 years, it was found that those who had a higher anger response to stress had higher risk of developing premature heart disease (before age 55). Even exposure to traffic has been implicated. (Uptodate.com has more references if you are interested.)

Superstar stem-cell researcher Hwang Woo Suk was accused of major scientific fraud on Thursday. A collaborator now claims Hwang faked much of the data for the groundbreaking research he published in May; earlier in the week, a co-author from the University of Pittsburgh withdrew his name from the work. Investigations are now underway in Pittsburgh and Seoul. How do you investigate scientific misconduct?

First, interview everyone who might be involved. In the United States, research institutions conduct their own inquiries into scientific wrongdoing. If the allegation seems credible, a small committee will spend up to a month quietly looking into the matter. They'll talk to witnesses—most likely members of the lab, collaborators, and the person who made the charge—before confronting the accused researcher with the charges against him. If the committee decides there's reasonable evidence for misconduct, the issue passes to a larger committee for a formal investigation.

"...and traffic flowing onto I-90"

On Friday December 16th, Dr. Hwang Woo Suk set reporters straight about the stem cell matter:

"I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again ... These allegations are false."

Wait, sorry, I confused the quotes I keep in my "it isn't the mistake it is the cover-up" file. Wrong object lesson. But Dr. Hwang might as well have said that the fraud charge by his colleagues "depends on what the meaning of 'is' is." In fact his response to accusations of misconduct was so complicated on Friday that all of the reporters there seem to have come away oblivious to what he had said or how it differered from prior accounts.

John Spencer, star of NBC television drama "The West Wing," died on Friday at a Los Angeles hospital after suffering a heart attack, his spokesman Ron Hofmann said.

"Today's Maker from our new book Makers - Kerry McLean, Wall Lake, Michigan. 225-horsepower gasoline-powered monowheel. "You may be hauling ass, but you feel like you're floating," says McLean. The metal fabricator and machinist built his first monowheel in 1970 and has been obsessively perfecting the design ever since. "I don't feel like anyone has seen it through," he says. "You hear words like 'trial and error.' That's just some hillbilly stuff. Broomsticks and baling wire. I'm doing R&D." Makers: page 20. View photo! See previous Makers of the day here. View sample PDF. Click here to get Makers the book before the holidays!

www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/12/maker_of_the_day_ke..."

You've got mail -- and possibly gonorrhea, HIV or another sexually transmitted disease.

E-mail sent through Web sites launched in Los Angeles and San Francisco is providing people with a free, sometimes anonymous, way to tell their casual sex partners they might have picked up more than they bargained for.

Los Angeles County health officials launched www.inspotla.org this week in a bid to reduce the rapidly rising spread of STDs by encouraging sexually active men and women to get tested.

About 330 million years ago, for questionable reasons, a water scorpion the size of a small human lurched out of the lake where it lived and lumbered slowly across the sand, dragging its tail behind.

Paleontologist Martin A. Whyte recently found the creature's tracks imprinted in a stretch of sandstone in Scotland. The trail includes the prints of six feet flanking the groove cut by the tail. Whyte estimates that the scorpion was about 5 feet, 3 inches long and about 3 1/2 feet wide.

Scientists said yesterday that they have discovered a tiny genetic mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans tens of thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one of biology's most enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity's greatest sources of strife.

The work suggests that the skin-whitening mutation occurred by chance in a single individual after the first human exodus from Africa, when all people were brown-skinned. That person's offspring apparently thrived as humans moved northward into what is now Europe, helping to give rise to the lightest of the world's races.

As part of a broad new effort to better understand how diabetics manage their illness, the New York City Board of Health is ordering laboratories to pass along detailed information on individual tests that measure blood sugar levels to the city's health department.

It is the first such reporting and tracking effort in the country, and it is being closely watched by public health officials nationwide wrestling with ways to better control the epidemic of diabetes...

However, some critics of the effort worry that it is an invasion of patient privacy, especially since people will not be given the chance to opt out of having their information collected. There is also a fear that the information could find its way into the hands of insurance providers, who could, in turn, use it to discriminate against patients.

"I am shocked and dismayed to hear this news about A1c blood test results being given to the health department without patient knowledge or consent," said Robin Kaigh, a New York lawyer who has tracked medical privacy issues. She added, "In addition, this landmark step will cause other databases of sensitive patient information or disease registries to be seriously contemplated in the future..."

Have you heard the latest news? We've decoded the DNA of dogs. Here's how the media-approved version of the story goes: We're showing our love for "man's best friend" by discovering and treating the genetic causes of his ailments. In return, we'll learn to treat the same ailments in ourselves.

It's a heartwarming story, but it's a fraud. The reason we targeted the dog genome for decoding is that it's useful for genetic research. The reason it's useful for genetic research is that dogs are neatly divided into breeds, each of which is plagued by specific diseases. And the reason dogs are divided into diseased breeds is that we made them that way. Dogs are the world's longest self-serving, ecologically reckless genetic experiment, perpetrated by the world's first genetically engineering species: us.

A 73-year-old man presented with a self-inflicted stab wound to the abdomen. A plasma ethanol level of 27 mg per deciliter was found on preliminary toxicologic screening; the results of chemical analyses were normal. No internal injuries were found on exploratory laparotomy. Eight hours postoperatively, the patient became confused and was intubated because of respiratory distress. Arterial blood gas measurements showed a pH of 6.91, partial pressure of carbon dioxide of 12 mm Hg, and base excess of –30 mmol per liter. Blood chemical analyses showed a bicarbonate level of less than 5 mmol per liter, a creatinine level of 1.4 mg per deciliter (123.8 µmol per liter), an anion gap of 26, and serum osmolarity of 346 mOsm per liter with an osmolar gap of 38 mOsm per liter...

On Nov. 1, Intrade, a Web site that allows people to bet on the likelihood of future events, issued a press release titled "Trading on Bird Flu -- 65% probability of U.S. case by March 2006!" The release announced that the trading activity on the exchange's bird flu contracts -- offering savvy "investors" a chance to gamble on when the first strain of the deadly H5N1 will be confirmed in the United States -- had doubled in the last month. The report, put out by Intrade P.R. executive Mike Knesevitch, ended with an ominous, sobering claim:

"Can these markets give us insight into global events like pandemics, hurricanes and politics? In the short history Intrade has put together, the answer is YES."

I always thought HOUSE missed
a step by not adapting the hideous
acronymic codes used by doctors
in their notes. The British ones
were discovered first, but they're
used everywhere. The most famous
one is FLK, for Funny-Looking Kid,
sometimes modified by JLD -- Just
Like Dad, and, brilliantly, Normal
For Norfolk, a rural county of
tractors and farming communities.
CTO means Circling The Drain and
GPO is Good For Parts Only, not
things you want to see on the chart
when you've been in hospital a
while with a nasty cough. There's
also a Rule Of Five -- if you've got
more than five tubes in you, you're
fucked. PFO is a favourite: Pissed,
Fell Over. The Dirtbag Index is
horrendous -- divide the number
of tattoos by the number of teeth
to find how many baths the patient
has taken that year.

So much for staying up at night worrying about "a transition to a lower vacuum state propagating outwards from its source at the speed of light," one of their catastrophe scenarios. But insomniacs still have some fodder, the pair concludes. Their estimate "does not apply in general to disasters that become possible only after certain technologies have been developed, for example, nuclear annihilation or extinction through engineered microorganisms. So we still have plenty to worry about."

The Coca-Cola Company today announced that it will launch Coca-Cola Blāk in January in France, the first of several countries – including the United States - that are expected to introduce the new Coca-Cola and coffee fusion in 2006.

Coca-Cola Blāk is an invigorating and stimulating blend that has a perfect balance of the effervescent taste sensation of Coca-Cola and natural flavors, with real coffee. The lightly carbonated, mid-calorie beverage, which is designed to appeal to adult consumers, is yet another example how The Coca-Cola Company reaches out to new audiences and addresses new beverage occasions.

Kidney patients who need a transplant in Britain are being targeted by a medical group offering them new organs taken from executed Chinese prisoners...

The internet company transplantsinternational.com makes it clear that the organs are from prisoners who are about to be executed. The prisoners apparently give their consent and are told that their families will receive money for the 'donation'.

Under the heading 'Where do kidneys come from?', the company states: 'A cadaveric kidney comes from a dead person and in the majority of cases in China, the dead people are prisoners, which allows for us to know at least two weeks ahead of time when the kidney will be ready.'

"bought at the British import store in Poulsbo

tasty, but not sure it was worth the price paid for it in Narnia..."

And so, with anticipation, I took a bite of the Turkish Delight. And a second later, spat it into my hand. It tasted like soap rolled in plaster dust, or like a lump of Renuzit air freshener: The texture was both waxy and filling-looseningly chewy. This … this? ... was the sweetmeat that led Edmund to betray his siblings and doomed Aslan to death on a stone slab? Watching the movie last week, I cringed watching Edmund push piece after squidgy red piece into his drooling mouth, shuddering to think that children in theaters everywhere were bound to start yammering for the candy and that on Christmas morning or Hanukkah nights, their faces would crumple with disappointment as their teeth sank into the vile jelly they had thought they wanted.

At least a dozen dogs were jolted yesterday when they stepped on an electrically charged sidewalk on the upper East Side, witnesses said.

None of the animals or their owners was injured, but the incidents raised fears that the streets of New York are still dangerous in foul weather.

Con Ed stepped up repairs and inspections of underground cables two years ago after 30-year-old Jodie Lane was killed when she stepped onto an electrified cable cover on E. 11th St. while walking her dogs...

Con Ed also was investigating two manhole explosions that destroyed a van in Brooklyn.

The explosions on Fifth Ave. in Park Slope within 10 minutes of each other sent pedestrians fleeing for cover, but there were no injuries.

"Japan - Kyoto

Best viewed in large size 1000 x 665"

A response delayed by a timer attached to a patient's ventilator will solve the Israeli government's wish to introduce passive euthanasia for terminally ill people and to allow them to die with dignity...

If a terminally ill patient older than 17 has requested in a living will that his life should not be extended by artificial means, a doctor will be allowed by law to carry out the patient's wish. An adult who has power of attorney may also make such a request on someone else's behalf. Being terminally ill is defined as having less than six months to live.

Active euthanasia and the withholding of nutrition will not be permitted under the new law because they violate Jewish law. But the legislation, expected to come into effect within a year, will allow the halting of ongoing support using a timer device. The family of a terminally ill patient will no longer have to go to court for permission to stop artificial life support if the patient has previously made it clear that that is his or her wish.

The timer, based on the idea of the Sabbath clock, used in religious Jewish homes to turn electrical devices on and off on Saturday, would operate for 24 hours at a time and set off a red light or alarm after 12. The patient or their representative could at any time request an extension. But if the dying person were determined not to have their life extended, the timer would turn off the ventilator at the end of the cycle.

The best way to protect kidneys of diabetic patients is to lower blood pressure. Period.

So says Juan P. Casas M.D. and colleagues of the British Heart Foundation Laboratory at University College London, who reported that a meta-analysis of 127 randomized trials did not confirm a renoprotective effect for either ACE-inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers.

The purported benefit of either ACE inhibitors or ARBs comes from placebo-controlled studies, Dr. Casas and colleagues reported in the Dec. 10 issue of The Lancet. But when these agents were compared with other antihypertensive drugs that also substantially reduce blood pressure "there was no evidence of a significant salutary effect of ACE inhibitors or ARBs on renal outcomes in patients with diabetes."

Background A consensus has emerged that angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitors and angiotensin-II receptor blockers (ARBs) have specific renoprotective effects. Guidelines specify that these are the drugs of choice for the treatment of hypertension in patients with renal disease. We sought to determine to what extent this consensus is supported by the available evidence.

Methods Electronic databases were searched up to January, 2005, for randomised trials assessing antihypertensive drugs and progression of renal disease. Effects on primary discrete endpoints (doubling of creatinine and end-stage renal disease) and secondary continuous markers of renal outcomes (creatinine, albuminuria, and glomerular filtration rate) were calculated with random-effect models. The effects of ACE inhibitors or ARBs in placebo-controlled trials were compared with the effects seen in trials that used an active comparator drug.

Findings Comparisons of ACE inhibitors or ARBs with other antihypertensive drugs yielded a relative risk of 0·71 (95% CI 0·49–1·04) for doubling of creatinine and a small benefit on end-stage renal disease (relative risk 0·87, 0·75–0·99). Analyses of the results by study size showed a smaller benefit in large studies. In patients with diabetic nephropathy, no benefit was seen in comparative trials of ACE inhibitors or ARBs on the doubling of creatinine (1·09, 0·55–2·15), end-stage renal disease (0·89, 0·74–1·07), glomerular filtration rate, or creatinine amounts. Placebo-controlled trials of ACE inhibitors or ARBs showed greater benefits than comparative trials on all renal outcomes, but were accompanied by substantial reductions in blood pressure in favour of ACE inhibitors or ARBs.

Interpretation The benefits of ACE inhibitors or ARBs on renal outcomes in placebo-controlled trials probably result from a blood-pressure-lowering effect. In patients with diabetes, additional renoprotective actions of these substances beyond lowering blood pressure remain unproven, and there is uncertainty about the greater renoprotection seen in non-diabetic renal disease.

access ... america ... american ... american heart association ... avian flu ... bioethics ... bird flu ... blog ... blogosphere ... breast cancer ... bush ... california ... canada ... carnival ... case ... cdc ... cell research ... clinic ... community ... computer ... contact ... death ... diagnosis ... doctors ... dog ... drug benefit ... drugs ... electronic medical ... email ... family ... federal ... feed ... flu ... flu pandemic ... food and drug administration ... geena ... google ... grand rounds ... guess ... health care ... heart ... heart attack ... helen ... hospital impact ... hospitals ... hurricane katrina ... idea ... impact ... infectious ... intelligent design ... internal medicine ... job ... lead ... love ... mail ... mass ... media ... medical records ... medical school ... medications ... medicine ... merck ... money ... new england journal ... new orleans ... new york ... nurses ... nursing ... pandemic ... parents ... photo ... physicians ... podcast ... popular ... quality ... reading ... reason ... running ... san francisco ... science ... scientists ... search ... service ... south ... state ... stem cell ... stem cell research ... stem cells ... story ... tamiflu ... thankful ... thanksgiving ... therapy ... united states ... vioxx ... wall ... wall street ... wall street journal ... washington ... white

Don Wise, professor emeritus of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is the nation's foremost proponent of ID. No, Wise isn't getting ready to testify on behalf of the school board in Dover, PA. Rather, he advocates for a different version of the acronym: "incompetent design."

Wise cites serious flaws in the systems of the human body as evidence that design in the universe exhibits not an obvious source of, but a sore lack of, intelligence...

Merck misrepresented the results of a crucial clinical trial of Vioxx to play down the drug's heart risks, The New England Journal of Medicine said today.

The Journal's allegation may play a critical role in the thousands of lawsuits that Merck faces over Vioxx, a once-popular painkiller that has been linked to heart attacks and strokes. In the three lawsuits that have reached trial so far, Merck has contended that it promptly disclosed information about Vioxx's heart risks...

In an "Expression of Concern" posted this afternoon on its Web site, The Journal said the authors of the study had deleted data on strokes and other vascular problems suffered by patients in the Vigor trial two days before it submitted the results to the publication.

The authors also underreported the number of heart attacks suffered by patients taking Vioxx, claiming that there were 17 heart attacks when there were actually 20, The Journal said. The authors have been asked to correct the study, The Journal said.

Research with a new nicotine vaccine shows that the vaccine is safe and well tolerated, with higher doses producing a greater rate of abstinence.

"We were pleased to see that because that indicates this vaccine does indeed have a significant impact on smoking behavior," Dr. Dorothy K. Hatsukami of the Tobacco Use Research Center in Minneapolis told Reuters Health. The finding of increased abstinence, she added, was "surprising.

Specialists of the Voronezh Regional Administration Healthcare Department are worried by the clamor stirred by some media concerning a case of HIV infection of one of the donors in Voronezh. “We are attentively studying the publications on the subject, and we do not rule out that we have to undertake measures to especially inventive ones,” an expert from the commission to investigate the incident told REGNUM. “Some of them have come to the point of speaking about hundreds of infected people, and about nearly general infection of the whole city. Have a look at the headlines in the Internet: ‘Medications from HIV-infected blood transfused to hundreds of Voronezh residents’, ‘Doctors in Voronezh have contaminated 208 people by HIV, including an infant’… Blood from one donor can be transfused to 208 patients only by a medicine dropper! Well, one of the media has reported that ‘208 donors were in infected by AIDS in Voronezh’. Really, there is a disease more dangerous than AIDS, and it is called idiotism.”

The Food and Drug Administration today is alerting health care professionals and patients about early results of new studies for Paxil (paroxetine) suggesting that the drug increases the risk for birth defects, particularly heart defects, when women take it during the first three months of pregnancy. Paxil is approved for the treatment of depression and several other psychiatric disorders. FDA is currently gathering additional data and waiting for the final results of the recent studies in order to better understand the higher risk for birth defects that has been seen with Paxil.

While many pet owners are sure their companions benefit their health, few take that belief as far as Mike Lingenfelter. The Alabama man credits Dakota, his Labrador retriever, with detecting several heart attacks before Lingenfelter knew he was having them...

The pet owning study reviewed research conducted since the 1980s that has helped popularize what BMJ called the "view that pet ownership could have positive benefits on human health." Reputed benefits include higher survival rates from heart attack, lower use of doctors' services, a reduced risk of asthma and allergies in children exposed to pets during the first year of life, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and better physical and psychological well-being in the elderly.

In the effort to slow earth's rising temperatures, even a well-intentioned proposal could backfire, scientists said Wednesday.

One suggestion has been to grow more trees, which absorb carbon dioxide, the gas blamed for trapping heat. More trees mean more carbon dioxide removed from the air.

New computer simulations, however, indicate that establishing new forests across North America could provide a cooling effect for a few decades to a century, but that after that, they would lead to more warming.

Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) is looked on as a panacea which will decrease medical error, improve efficiency, and improve patient safety. Only it looks like it has some major, unintended consequences, like increasing death according to an article titled "Unexpected Increased Mortality After Implementation of a Commercially Sold Computerized Physician Order Entry System" in this months Pediatrics.

Masturbation in Infancy and Early Childhood Presenting as a Movement Disorder: 12 Cases and a Review of the Literature

Purpose. Infantile masturbation (gratification behavior) is not commonly identified as a cause of recurrent paroxysmal movements. Extensive and fruitless investigations may be pursued before establishing this diagnosis. Sparse literature is available regarding masturbatory behavior as a whole, but literature available as case reports describes common features. The purpose of this case series is to describe consistent features in young children with posturing accompanying masturbation.

Methods. Twelve patients presenting to a pediatric movement disorders clinic with a suspected movement disorder were determined to have postures and movements associated with masturbation. We reviewed the clinical history, examination, and home videotapes of these patients.

Results. Our patients had several features in common: (1) onset after the age of 3 months and before 3 years; (2) stereotyped episodes of variable duration; (3) vocalizations with quiet grunting; (4) facial flushing with diaphoresis; (5) pressure on the perineum with characteristic posturing of the lower extremities; (6) no alteration of consciousness; (7) cessation with distraction; (8) normal examination; and (9) normal laboratory studies.

Conclusions. The identification of these common features by primary care providers should assist in making this diagnosis and eliminate the need for extensive, unnecessary testing. Direct observation of the events is crucial, and the video camera is a useful tool that may help in the identification of masturbatory behavior.

Researchers have decoded the dog genome to a high degree of accuracy, allowing deep insights into the evolutionary history not only of Canis familiaris but also of its devoted companion species, Homo sapiens.

The dog whose genome has been sequenced is Tasha, a female boxer whose owners wish to remain anonymous, said Kerstin Lindblad-Toh, a biologist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge who led a large group of colleagues in the DNA sequencing effort. Their findings are being reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.

Here we report a high-quality draft genome sequence of the domestic dog (Canis familiaris), together with a dense map of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across breeds. The dog is of particular interest because it provides important evolutionary information and because existing breeds show great phenotypic diversity for morphological, physiological and behavioural traits. We use sequence comparison with the primate and rodent lineages to shed light on the structure and evolution of genomes and genes. Notably, the majority of the most highly conserved non-coding sequences in mammalian genomes are clustered near a small subset of genes with important roles in development. Analysis of SNPs reveals long-range haplotypes across the entire dog genome, and defines the nature of genetic diversity within and across breeds. The current SNP map now makes it possible for genome-wide association studies to identify genes responsible for diseases and traits, with important consequences for human and companion animal health.

• The ratio of compressions-to-ventilations has been changed to 30:2
• Rescuers now deliver 1 shock (360J monophasic) followed by CPR, not 3 shocks
• Lay rescuers no longer check for circulation
• Many other algorithms have been simplified

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Ethical Issues
Part 3: Overview of CPR
Part 4: Adult Basic Life Support
Part 5: Electrical Therapies. Automated External Defibrillators, Defibrillation, Cardioversion, and Pacing
Part 6: CPR Techniques and Devices
Part 7.1: Adjuncts for Airway Control and Ventilation
Part 7.2: Management of Cardiac Arrest
Part 7.3: Management of Symptomatic Bradycardia and Tachycardia
Part 7.4: Monitoring and Medications
Part 7.5: Postresuscitation Support
Part 8: Stabilization of the Patient With Acute Coronary Syndromes
Part 9: Adult Stroke
Part 10.1: Life-Threatening Electrolyte Abnormalities
Part 10.2: Toxicology in ECC
Part 10.3: Drowning
Part 10.4: Hypothermia
Part 10.5: Near-Fatal Asthma
Part 10.6: Anaphylaxis
Part 10.7: Cardiac Arrest Associated With Trauma
Part 10.8: Cardiac Arrest Associated With Pregnancy
Part 10.9: Electric Shock and Lightning Strikes
Part 11: Pediatric Basic Life Support
Part 12: Pediatric Advanced Life Support
Part 13: Neonatal Resuscitation Guidelines
Part 14: First Aid
Major Changes in the 2005 AHA Guidelines for CPR and ECC. Reaching the Tipping Point for Change
Management of Conflict of Interest Issues in the Activities of the American Heart Association Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee, 2000-2005

Led by University of Missouri-Columbia biological physics professor Gabor Forgacs and aided by a $5 million National Science Foundation grant, researchers at three universities have developed bio-ink and bio-paper that could make so-called organ printing a reality.

Here's how it works: A customized milling machine prints a small sheet of bio-paper. This "paper" is a variable gel composed of modified gelatin and hyaluronan, a sugar-rich material. Bio-ink blots -- each a little ball of cellular material a few hundred microns in diameter -- are then printed onto the paper. The process is repeated as many times as needed, the sheets stacked on top of each other.

Once the stack is the right size -- maybe two centimeters' worth of sheets, each containing a ring of blots, for a tube resembling a blood vessel -- printing stops. The stack is incubated in a bioreactor, where cells fuse with their neighbors in all directions. The bio-paper works as a scaffold to support and nurture cells, and should be eaten away by them or naturally degrade, researchers said.

Coffee and tea may reduce the risk of serious liver damage in people who drink too much alcohol, are overweight or have too much iron in the blood, researchers reported yesterday.

The study of nearly 10,000 people showed that those who drank more than two cups of coffee or tea per day developed chronic liver disease at half the rate of those who drank less than one cup each day.

• peripheral vs. central access
• floor vs. ICU care
• ultrafiltration may be performed by cardiologists and intensivists without needing to call a nephrologist (which potentially, might be a disadvantage to the patient)

A device that performs ultrafiltration of blood, without requiring specialized nursing care or invasive central intravenous access, can reduce fluid overload in patients with congestive heart failure, according to a new study in the Dec. 6, 2005, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

"We found that this form of ultrafiltration therapy was safe, effective and successfully applied to patients in a variety of hospital settings. Compared to patients receiving standard treatment with intravenous diuretics, patients undergoing ultrafiltration had more fluid removed in the first 24 and 48 hours and improved symptoms of heart failure and shortness of breath at 48 hours," said Bradley A. Bart, M.D., F.A.C.C., from the Minnesota Heart Failure Consortium in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Patients admitted to the hospital with acute decompensated heart failure are suffering from symptoms primarily related to fluid build-up and congestion, including swelling around the feet and ankles, bloated abdomens, cough and shortness of breath.

The RAPID-CHF trial is the first randomized controlled trial of ultrafiltration for acute decompensated heart failure. As blood passes through the device, ultrafiltration removes water and some small molecules through a membrane, before the blood is returned to the patient.

Researchers randomly assigned 40 hospitalized patients to receive either usual care, including diuretic medicine in most cases, or a single eight-hour ultrafiltration treatment, in addition to usual care. The ultrafiltration was performed with a device that has been approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration for use outside of intensive care units and without specialized nursing or central intravenous access. The manufacturer of the device, CHF Solutions Inc., funded this study.

Chick: ...wait, what?
Man: Yeah, I have hepatitis.
Chick : Which one?
Man: ...A and C.

--Yaffa Cafe, St. Marks

Officials in at least two nations now suspect the avian flu bug has mutated into a virus that is being transmitted from human to human – a development world health authorities have estimated could result in the deaths of tens of millions...

Dr. Charoen Chuchottaworn, an avian-flu expert at the Public Health Ministry [in Thailand], said doctors reviewing the cases were alerted by the very mild symptoms present in both patients, neither of whom had had any recent contact with birds or poultry.

The doctors are unsure as to how either of the infected contracted the disease and have raised the possibility that the virus has traded its pathogenicity for ease of transmission.

Meanwhile, in Indonesia, the disease is spreading so rapidly, particularly in the capital of Jakarta, some health officials strongly suspect the long-dreaded mutation has already occurred.

A woman in the subway is playing what I believe is the Harry Potter theme -- on a *saw* -- perfectly.

A deadly bacterial illness commonly seen in people taking antibiotics appears to be growing more common, even in patients who are not taking such drugs, federal health officials warned on Thursday.

The bacterium, Clostridium difficile, has become a menace in hospitals and nursing homes, and last year it was blamed for 100 deaths over 18 months at a hospital in Quebec.

Recent cases in four states show that the bacteria are appearing more often in healthy people who have not been admitted to hospitals or even taken antibiotics, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"What exactly has made C-diff act up right now, we don't know," said Dr. L. Clifford McDonald, an epidemiologist at the centers.

Clostridium difficile is a spore-forming, gram-positive bacillus that produces exotoxins that are pathogenic to humans. C. difficile--associated disease (CDAD) ranges in severity from mild diarrhea to fulminant colitis and death. Antimicrobial use is the primary risk factor for development of CDAD because it disrupts normal bowel flora and promotes C. difficile overgrowth. C. difficile typically has affected older or severely ill patients who are hospital inpatients or residents of long-term--care facilities. Recently, however, both the frequency and severity of health-care--associated CDAD has increased; from 2000 to 2001, the rate of U.S. hospital discharge diagnoses of CDAD increased by 26% (1). One possible explanation for these increases is the emergence of a previously uncommon strain of C. difficile responsible for severe hospital outbreaks (2). Although individual cases of CDAD are not nationally reportable, in 2005, the Pennsylvania Department of Health (PADOH) and CDC received several case reports of serious CDAD in otherwise healthy patients with minimal or no exposure to a health-care setting. An investigation was initiated by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH), PADOH, and CDC to determine the scope of the problem and explore a possible change in CDAD epidemiology. This report summarizes the results of the investigation in Pennsylvania and three other states, which indicated the presence of severe CDAD in healthy persons living in the community and peripartum women, two populations previously thought to be at low risk. The findings underscore the importance of judicious antimicrobial use, the need for community clinicians to maintain a higher index of suspicion for CDAD, and the need for surveillance to better understand the changing epidemiology of CDAD.

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LifeVest is the world's first wearable defibrillator for patients who are at high risk for sudden cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death.

A 76-year-old grandmother has become one of the oldest transplant donors in the country after she gave up a kidney to help her son, a hospital said...

A month after the operation, both are said to be doing well.

The record is believed to be held by an 81-year-old donor.

The waiting room for Hilarie Cash's practice has the look and feel of many a therapist's office, with soothing classical music, paintings of gentle swans and colorful flowers and on the bookshelves stacks of brochures on how to get help.

But along with her patients, Dr. Cash, who runs Internet/Computer Addiction Services here in the city that is home to Microsoft, is a pioneer in a growing niche in mental health care and addiction recovery.

The patients, including Mike, 34, are what Dr. Cash and other mental health professionals call onlineaholics. They even have a diagnosis: Internet addiction disorder.

These specialists estimate that 6 percent to 10 percent of the approximately 189 million Internet users in this country have a dependency that can be as destructive as alcoholism and drug addiction, and they are rushing to treat it...

Now 39, Stapleton has taken the lesson he learned that day--that children can hear sounds at higher frequencies than adults can--to fashion a novel device that he hopes will provide a solution to the eternal problem of obstreperous teenagers who hang around outside stores and cause trouble.

The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he said, can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away...

At first, members of the usual crowd tried to gather as normal, repeatedly going inside the store with their fingers in their ears and "begging me to turn it off," Gough said. But he held firm and neatly avoided possible aggressive confrontations: "I told them it was to keep birds away because of the bird flu epidemic."

Psychologist Daniel Nettle of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in England and his colleagues recruited 425 British men and women through advertisements in a small town newsletter and various specialty lists for creative types. The researchers surveyed this group with questions designed to measure various schizophrenic behaviors, artistic output and sexual success, among other aspects of their personal history.

Results of that survey showed that people who displayed strong evidence of "unusual experiences" and "impulsive non-conformity"--two broad types of schizophrenic behavior--had more sexual partners than their peers and were more likely to be involved in artistic pursuits, either professionally or as a hobby. Those who professionally pursued the arts had the highest average number of partners--5.5--compared to just over four for the less creative study participants.

Of course, there are a number of possible reasons for the artists' mating success. "Creative people are often considered to be very attractive and get lots of attention as a result," Nettle explains. "It could also be that very creative types lead a bohemian lifestyle and tend to act on more sexual impulses and opportunities."

There is an evolutionary puzzle surrounding the persistence of schizophrenia, since it is substantially heritable and associated with sharply reduced fitness. However, some of the personality traits which are predictive of schizophrenia are also associated with artistic creativity. Geoffrey Miller has proposed that artistic creativity functions to attract mates. Here, we investigate the relationship between schizotypal personality traits, creative activity, and mating success in a large sample of British poets, visual artists, and other adults. We show that two components of schizotypy are positively correlated with mating success. For one component, this relationship is mediated by creative activity. Results are discussed in terms of the evolution of human creativity and the genesis of schizophrenia.

Surgeons will attempt early next year to mend the severed nerves of young people who have suffered motorbike accidents in the first trial of a simple but potentially revolutionary technology that could one day allow the paralysed to walk again.

At least ten operations will be carried out to test in humans a technique pioneered in animals by the neuroscientist Geoffrey Raisman, who heads the spinal repair unit of University College, London. He discovered 20 years ago that cells from the lining of the nose constantly regenerate themselves. Professor Raisman's team believes that if those cells were implanted at the site of the damage they would build a bridge across the break, allowing the nerve fibres to knit back together.

Hurricane-ravaged New Orleans will deploy the nation's first municipally owned wireless Internet system that will be free for all users, part of an effort to jump-start recovery by making living and doing business in the city as attractive as possible.

Actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes may be placing their unborn child at risk if they are performing fetal ultrasound on Ms. Holmes with no medical supervision and, if so, should not, in any way, view their fetal keepsake ultrasound images as a substitute for appropriate medical attention. Use of such medical equipment by unlicensed individuals may also be a violation of federal law.

Noemi Pinto and Frank Talavera shared an unusual honeymoon. Several hours after exchanging vows at City Hall in late September, Mr. Talavera held his wife's hand as she was wheeled into an operating room for a kidney transplant. He had asked her to marry him several times during their seven-year relationship, and Ms. Pinto had always refused, saying their relationship didn't need a piece of paper for validation. This time, it was she who popped not the question, but the answer.

The government plans to subsidize more weight-loss surgery. Medicare spent about $13,000 on the surgery for each of 8,000 people last year (that's about $100 million), but the procedure might save money by averting other medical problems related to obesity. However, the program might stop subsidizing such surgery for seniors, because data suggest it's killing them.

"My Consult" is a Web-based second opinion service offered by e-Cleveland Clinic, the facility's Internet service. Patients who have received a diagnosis of any of more than 600 life-threatening or life-altering conditions can request an electronic consultation with a Cleveland Clinic doctor. For $565, a physician provides a written second opinion and a treatment recommendation -- all within five to seven working days of receiving a completed request.

Researchers said raised levels of a protein was linked to feelings of euphoria and dependence experienced at the start of a relationship.

But after studying people in long and short relationships and single people, they found the levels receded in time.

The team analysed alterations in proteins known as neurotrophins in the bloodstreams of men and women aged 18 to 31, the Psychoneuroendocrinology journal reported.

Our current knowledge of the neurobiology of romantic love remains scanty. In view of the complexity of a sentiment like love, it would not be surprising that a diversity of biochemical mechanisms could be involved in the mood changes of the initial stage of a romance. In the present study, we have examined whether the early romantic phase of a loving relationship could be associated with alterations in circulating levels of neurotrophins (NTs). Plasma levels of NGF, BDNF, NT-3 and NT-4 were measured in a total of 58 subjects who had recently fallen in love and compared with those of two control groups, consisting of subjects who were either single or were already engaged in a long-lasting relationship. NGF level was significantly higher (p<0.001) in the subjects in love [mean (SEM): 227 (14) pg/ml] than in either the subjects with a long-lasting relationship [123 (10) pg/ml] or the subjects with no relationship [149 (12) pg/ml]. Notably, there was also a significant positive correlation between levels of NGF and the intensity of romantic love as assessed with the passionate love scale (r=0.34; p=0.007). No differences in the concentrations of other NTs were detected. In 39 subjects in love who—after 12–24 months—maintained the same relationship but were no longer in the same mental state to which they had referred during the initial evaluation, plasma NGF levels decreased and became indistinguishable from those of the control groups. Taken together, these findings suggest that some behavioural and/or psychological features associated with falling in love could be related to raised NGF levels in the bloodstream.

It's the not-too-distant future, say 2016. You have been diagnosed with Stage III melanoma. Cancer has metastasized throughout your body. Just 10 years ago, in 2006, the choice of treatment would have been based on the type of primary cancer, the size and location of the metastasis, your age, your general health and your treatment history. Your prognosis would have been gloomy. But that was back in 2006, before we entered the era of nanomedicine.

In 2016, your doctor will be capable of scanning your entire genome in a few minutes. She will do this because every cell has a different gene expression pattern or profile. When a cell becomes cancerous, this profile changes. Your Stage III melanoma has a unique, schizoid genetic signature reflecting both a skin cell heritage and a newly acquired outlaw metabolism. Your doctor will explain that while your cancer has a great deal in common with other Stage III melanomas, it is not exactly like any other. Your doctor knows this because for the past few years DNA from virtually every melanoma patient in the U.S. healthcare system has been routinely extracted, scanned and deposited in a national database. This population of sequences, fully analyzed and with a user-friendly graphic interface, is available in real time. Searching this database for any specific cancer sequence will be about as difficult in 2016 as finding Madonna's birthday on Google is today.

Despite more than a decade's worth of research showing that taking too much of a popular pain reliever can ruin the liver, the number of severe, unintentional poisonings from the drug is on the rise, a new study reports. The drug, acetaminophen, is best known under the brand name Tylenol. But many consumers don't realize that it is also found in widely varying doses in several hundred common cold remedies and combination pain relievers.

Welcome to the second annual Medical Weblog Awards! These awards are designed to honor the very best in the medical blogosphere, as decided by you--the readers of these fine medical blogs.

It's been another year filled with explosive growth, stirring debate, and excellent writing -- in a number of fields. Our categories reflect this diversity. The categories for this year's awards will be:

-- Best Medical Weblog

-- Best New Medical Weblog (established in 2005)

-- Best Literary Medical Weblog

-- Best Clinical Sciences Weblog

-- Best Health Policies/Ethics Weblog

-- Best Medical Technologies/Informatics Weblog

Too much "junk in the trunk" isn't just a cosmetic concern anymore. Excess buttocks fat, especially in women, can reduce the effectiveness of vaccines, painkillers, contraceptives and anti-nausea drugs that are typically injected into the buttocks' gluteal muscles, researchers report.

"We are the first to report that the majority of intramuscular injections into the buttocks are not effective in the Western adult population," said Victoria O. Chan, a researchers at The Adelaide and Meath Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, and the lead researcher on the study.

The main new point is that there is not any need to stop Glucophage any significant time before contrast administration. The reasoning behind this is as follows:

a) presumably, Glucophage levels in the patient will be fine before the contrast study, so,

b) even if the patient goes into renal failure afterwards, and excretes no further Glucophage for awhile, those levels will simply remain fine unless the patient takes another dose. The important thing is to suspend Glucophage use after the contrast procedure until you are sure that contrast-induced renal failure will not occur. The reasonable time chosen for this observation period is 48 hours.

A fifteen-year-old girl with a peanut allergy has died after being kissed by her boyfriend following his snack of peanut butter.

Bedbugs are back and spreading through New York City like a swarm of locusts on a lush field of wheat.

Infestations have been reported sporadically across the United States over the past few years. But in New York, bedbugs have gained a foothold all across the city.

"It's becoming an epidemic," said Jeffrey Eisenberg, the owner of Pest Away Exterminating, an Upper West Side business that receives about 125 bedbug calls a week, compared with just a handful five years ago. "People are being tortured, and so am I. I spend half my day talking to hysterical people about bedbugs."

Happy Thanksgiving. At a family gathering, a distant relative argued that second hand smoke protects against cancer. "The risk ratio is 0.70. If second hand smoke were a vitamin, everyone would buy it."

Background Since anecdotal series and small, prospective, controlled trials suggest that mycophenolate mofetil may be effective for treating lupus nephritis, larger trials are desirable.

Methods We conducted a 24-week randomized, open-label, noninferiority trial comparing oral mycophenolate mofetil (initial dose, 1000 mg per day, increased to 3000 mg per day) with monthly intravenous cyclophosphamide (0.5 g per square meter of body-surface area, increased to 1.0 g per square meter) as induction therapy for active lupus nephritis. A change to the alternative regimen was allowed at 12 weeks in patients who did not have an early response. The study protocol specified adjunctive care and the use and tapering of corticosteroids. The primary end point was complete remission at 24 weeks (normalization of abnormal renal measurements and maintenance of baseline normal measurements). A secondary end point was partial remission at 24 weeks.

Results Of 140 patients recruited, 71 were randomly assigned to receive mycophenolate mofetil and 69 were randomly assigned to receive cyclophosphamide. At 12 weeks, 56 patients receiving mycophenolate mofetil and 42 receiving cyclophosphamide had satisfactory early responses. In the intention-to-treat analysis, 16 of the 71 patients (22.5 percent) receiving mycophenolate mofetil and 4 of the 69 patients receiving cyclophosphamide (5.8 percent) had complete remission, for an absolute difference of 16.7 percentage points (95 percent confidence interval, 5.6 to 27.9 percentage points; P=0.005), meeting the prespecified criteria for noninferiority and demonstrating the superiority of mycophenolate mofetil to cyclophosphamide. Partial remission occurred in 21 of the 71 patients (29.6 percent) and 17 of the 69 patients (24.6 percent), respectively (P=0.51). Three patients assigned to cyclophosphamide died, two during protocol therapy. Fewer severe infections and hospitalizations but more diarrhea occurred among those receiving mycophenolate.

Conclusions In this 24-week trial, mycophenolate mofetil was more effective than intravenous cyclophosphamide in inducing remission of lupus nephritis and had a more favorable safety profile.

"last of an 80 image series..
view the whole set"

Horn of rhinoceros. Penis of tiger. Root of sea holly. Husk of the emerald-green blister beetle known as the Spanish fly. So colorful and exotic is the list of substances that have been claimed to heighten sexual appetite that it's hard not to feel a twinge of disappointment on first beholding the latest entry -- a small white plastic nasal inhaler containing an odorless, colorless synthetic chemical called PT-141. Plain as it is, however, there is one thing that distinguishes PT-141 from the 4,000 years' worth of recorded medicinal aphrodisiacs that precede it: It actually works.

And it's coming to a medicine cabinet near you. The drug will soon enter Phase 3 clinical trials...

A patient with bipolar disorder has a cardiac arrest outside the hospital and is successfully resuscitated with an automatic defibrillator. When I see him, he's manic. "I'm the miracle man!" he shouts. And I'm thinking, "Yes you are."

"St. Paul, north of Theresienwiese. Straight from the camera.

Canon EF 17-40/f4L USM"

On Dec. 23, 1954, a 24-year-old Coast Guard veteran, Richard Herrick, received from his identical twin a remarkable present, a kidney. On that day, doctors at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston performed the first successful kidney transplant on Mr. Herrick.

A painting commemorating the operating room scene hangs in the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard.

I hope to receive the same gift. Mysteriously, my own kidneys retired early, a fact learned when I had routine lab tests in August 2004...

Japan starting Tuesday will ask travelers from bird flu-affected areas to have their shoes disinfected upon arrival at the country's four major airports, including Tokyo's international gateway at Narita, a government official said.

"1k-7817-f"

Research suggests that babies conceived with a little help from science are no more likely to have birth defects or chromosomal abnormalities than babies made the old-fashioned way.

But women who become pregnant through in vitro fertilization may experience more complications during their pregnancy, the scientists cautioned.

Like most anonymous sperm donors, Donor 150 of the California Cryobank will probably never meet any of the offspring he fathered through sperm bank donations. There are at least four, according to the bank's records, and perhaps many more, since the dozens of women who have bought Donor 150's sperm are not required to report when they have a baby.

But two of his genetic daughters, born to different mothers and living in different states, have been e-mailing and talking on the phone regularly since learning of each other's existence last summer. They plan to meet over Thanksgiving.

In the latest attempt to distinctively brand their illegal products, New York City drug dealers have begun peddling Ecstasy pills bearing images from the popular Harry Potter books and movies. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn this week charged 14 people with allegedly smuggling 400,000 pills of the popular club drug into the U.S. from Europe. Included in that large stash--which was intercepted by Drug Enforcement Administration and Customs Service agents--were the so-called Harry Potters, pills that retail in Gotham for about $25. Below you'll find an evidence photograph, provided to us by the DEA, of a seized Ecstasy pill bearing Harry's initials in the young wizard's distinctive lightning typeface.

"Nunca tengo muy claro cuando aplicar un "cutout" y puede que en este caso tampoco sea acertado, pero no me disgusta.
He seguido los consejos de Manuel Boo para estos casos.
Gracias."

SONY BMG can take two lessons from its recent wayward attempt to fend off digital piracy: One, in a world of technology-astute bloggers, it's not easy to get away with secretly infecting your customers' computers with potentially malicious code. And two, as many a politician has learned, explaining your own screw-up badly is often worse than the screw-up itself.

access ... american ... american medical association ... american society ... american society of nephrology ... avian flu ... bird flu ... blog ... blogosphere ... boston ... bush ... california ... canada ... case ... chronic kidney ... chronic kidney disease ... clinic ... cold ... consumers ... contact ... creationism ... death ... diagnosis ... doctors ... dover ... drugs ... eggs ... email ... evidence based ... family ... federal ... flu ... flu pandemic ... food and drug administration ... google ... grand rounds ... guess ... h5n1 ... hasn ... health care ... heart ... heart attack ... hilarious ... hospital impact ... hospitals ... hurricane katrina ... idea ... impact ... intelligent design ... internal medicine ... journal articles ... kent ... kidney disease ... lawyers ... london ... love ... mail ... medical center ... medical malpractice ... medical students ... medicare drug ... medicine ... merck ... money ... mssp ... nejm ... new orleans ... new york ... nexus ... nurses ... nyt ... ohio ... pandemic ... parents ... photo ... physicians ... podcast ... product ... pseudoscience ... quality ... reading ... reason ... science ... scientists ... search ... service ... spread ... state ... story ... tamiflu ... tests ... therapy ... united states ... vioxx ... virginia ... wake ... wall ... wall street journal ... washington ... west virginia

"Apparently, we'll soon know for sure.... NASA has announced in an article that 'A NASA/Stanford physics experiment called Gravity Probe B (GP-B) recently finished a year of gathering science data in Earth orbit. The results, which will take another year to analyze, should reveal the shape of space-time around Earth--and, possibly, the vortex.'" More from the article: "If Earth were stationary, that would be the end of the story. But Earth is not stationary. Our planet spins, and the spin should twist the dimple, slightly, pulling it around into a 4-dimensional swirl. This is what GP-B went to space to check."