The Learning Blog

Got this from Retrevo…

Many more pics and for other interesting articles, click here.

Highlight any portion you want:

Forget the movie depictions of dinosaurs as dull grey- or green-colored scaly animals. Until recently most artists colored their dinosaurs based on their modern-day counterparts, the reptiles. But, a few weeks ago, a  joint Chinese and American team, analyzing the number and shape of melanosomes in a dinosaur’s extant feathers, published the complete color palette of Anchiornis huxleyi which lived in the late Jurassic Period, 47 million years ago in China.

Melanosomes are parts of cells called melanocytes that contain melanin. Melanin is a compound that gives color to, for example, human skin and for this particular dinosaur its feathers.

For more info, click here and I highly recommend you check out the Youtube video below for a behind-the-scenes look at how scientists did the analysis.

Highlight any portion you want:

Normally, for family and medical staff, the best practice is always to act with these patients as if they were conscious, because we never know . But, of course, here we have proof; we do know. – Dr. Martin M. Monti, lead author

Researchers from the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and the Wolfson Brain Imaging Center, University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom have reported willful brain activity in patients who are in vegetative (not comatose) or minimally conscious states using functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI. Interestingly, one patient had correctly answered yes-or-no questions by activation in several areas of the brain while undergoing fMRI.

However, Dr. Monti cautioned that this one patient may not be representative of other people in the same condition.

A functional MRI is a special type of magnetic resonance imaging using the changes of blood flow in a particular area during a nerve activity in the brain or spinal cord.

Being in a vegetative state and in coma are two different things:

The vegetative state is a chronic or long-term condition. This condition differs from a coma: a coma is a state that lacks both awareness and wakefulness. Patients in a vegetative state may have awoken from a coma, but still have not regained awareness. In the vegetative state patients can open their eyelids occasionally and demonstrate sleep-wake cycles, but completely lack cognitive function. The vegetative state is also called a “coma vigil”. The chances of regaining awareness diminish considerably as the time spent in the vegetative state increases.

For more info, click here and here

Buy the Book PDA Download

Update Me E-mail alerts The Merck Manual Minute

Print This Topic Email This Topic

Coma is unresponsiveness from which the patient cannot be aroused. Similar, but less severe disturbances of consciousness may also occur. The mechanism involves dysfunction of both cerebral hemispheres or of the reticular activating system (also known as the ascending arousal system). Causes may be structural or nonstructural (eg, toxic or metabolic disturbances). Damage may be focal or diffuse. Diagnosis is clinical; identification of cause usually requires laboratory tests and neuroimaging. Treatment is immediate stabilization and specific management of the cause. For long-term coma, adjunctive treatment includes passive range-of-motion exercises, enteral feedings, and measures to prevent pressure ulcers.

Highlight any portion you want:

Saw this from Tekzilla’s CES 2010 presentation, the MOTOROLA BACKFLIP:

Specifications

WCDMA 850/1900/2100, GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps (Category 7/8), EDGE Class 12, GPRS Class 12, aGPS, Version 2.0, 802.11b

Weight: 133.00 g/4.7 oz

Android 1.5 Operating System

3.5mm headset jack, , USB 2.0 High Speed, BT Class 2.0, version 2.0 and 802.11 b/g

3.1” 320 x 480 256k TFT Display

AAC, AAC+, MIDI, MP3, WAV

Capture/playback/streaming, H.263, H.264, MPEG4

5 megapixel, auto-focus, LED

Full HTML browser, Android Webkit

2GB included up to 32GB supported

Highlight any portion you want:

It has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by (Andrew) Wakefield et al. are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation…. Therefore, we fully retract this paper from the published record. -The Editors of The Lancet

Highlight any portion you want:

From the Cochrane Library

Beta-blockers are commonly used in the treatment for high blood pressure (BP). In this review, we asked how much do beta-blockers reduce BP when used as the second drug to treat hypertension. Twenty trials lasting an average of 7 weeks were found in the world scientific literature to answer this question. The data showed that the addition of a beta-blocker to thiazide diuretics or calcium channel blockers reduced BP by 8/6 mmHg when given at doses 2 times the recommended starting dose.

When we compared these results with our previous review of the blood pressure lowering effect of thiazide diuretics as second line drug, we found that beta-blockers have a different pattern of BP lowering. This different pattern of effect on blood pressure might explain why first-line beta-blockers appear to be less effective at reducing adverse cardiovascular outcomes than first-line thiazide diuretics, particularly in older individuals.

For more info, click here.

Beta-blocker related media:

Highlight any portion you want:

One of the big things that made everyone excited in the recently concluded Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2010 are the demonstrations of audiovisual electronics specializing in 3D home entertainment. A host of electronic manufacturers flaunted their 3D TVs, Blu-ray players, and other gadgets such as those from Samsung, LG, Panasonic, just to name a few.

Now what do you need to get the 3D experience in your home? Retrevo, an online electronic marketplace, did an article on this specifically, and let me just briefly list down the salient points:

1. You need to buy a new TV. Specifically a TV that has enough computing power and refresh rates to process 3D images without flickering. This 3D TV should also support HDMI version 1.4 for high-quality images. HDMI 1.3, which is present in current hi-def TVs, can work but with lower quality.

2. You need to buy a new Blu-ray player that supports BDA 3D. If you own already a blu-ray player, a firmware upgrade might do the trick. Sony’s PlayStation 3 console is already a blu-ray player and can run BDA 3D with an upgrade but, alas, it only has HDMI 1.3.

3. You need to buy glasses to view the 3D images. Without them, you won’t see the pictures in 3D. Most manufacturers use the active shutter glasses to view 3D. Philips, on the other hand, is promoting their WoWvx 3D TV technology, without using any glasses.

4. What about programming? Well, cable operators as of this moment do not offer 3D channels yet, so most of the 3D movies will be shown through those blu-ray players. It is expected that some cable companies from some countries like in the US, Korea, and the UK will start offering 3D channels within this year or next year.

If you want to read and know more of this, click here.

Highlight any portion you want: