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Engineers propose new approach to single-ventricle heart surgery for infants -- Science... - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...141106104038.htm
shared by acatlin22 on 13 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The new approach would potentially reduce the number of surgeries the patients have to undergo in the first six months of life from two to just one
  • it would also create a more stable circuit for blood to flow from the heart to the lungs and the rest of the body within the first days and months of life.
  • Engineers ran computer simulations of the surgery and found it would reduce the workload on the patient's heart by as much as half. It would also increase blood flow to the lungs and increase the amount of oxygen the body receives.
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  • Currently, they undergo three surgeries by age three.
  • The first surgery is performed in the first few days of life and installs a small GoreTex tube to connect the pulmonary arteries with a blood vessel off the aorta. That 3.5-millimeter shunt becomes the only source of blood to the infants' lungs -- essentially their only source of oxygen. There is a 30 percent mortality rate associated with this surgery.
  • Between 3 to 6 months, surgeons remove the shunt and connect the superior vena cava to the pulmonary artery. At that stage, half the blood flow needed for oxygenation goes through this circuit created by the physicians.
  • At around age 3, a third surgery, called a Fontan, connects both the inferior and superior vena cava to the pulmonary arteries, usually in a T-shaped configuration. Experience has shown that jumping directly to the second step too early in the child's life, without allowing sufficient time for patients to grow, resulted in very high fatality rates for pediatric patients.
  • This would create what's known in fluid mechanics as an ejector pump
  • Engineers are proposing to combine the first and second steps of the surgery, with a small modification.
  • he clipped shunt creates what's called a Venturi effect, driving a low-pressure flow stream with an injection of a high-pressure flow stream and causing the speed of the blood flow to increase.
  • The shunt could be closed later, when circulation improves, via a catheter -- a much less invasive procedure.
  • n 2009, she and colleagues proposed a custom-made Y-shaped design for the Fontan surgery, rather than the traditional T-shaped connection used. In 2010-11, six patients underwent a Y-graft surgery at Stanford University.
  • Researchers also found that the Y-graft reduced energy losses in the blood flow and distributed blood flow more evenly to both lungs.
  • Marsden and her colleagues hope that SimVascular may be used in the future to impact a wide range of cardiovascular surgeries and devices in children and adults.
  • They propose to have the shunt, slightly clipped, go into the superior vena cava, while also connecting the superior vena cava to the pulmonary arteries.
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Sorting bloodborne cancer cells to better predict spread of disease -- ScienceDaily - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...141106103925.htm
shared by acatlin22 on 13 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Researchers are very interested in leveraging these circulating tumor cells, or CTCs, which have the potential to allow the properties of a tumor to be better understood without a biopsy, and may also help physicians recognize how aggressive a tumor is and whether it is likely to cause metastatic disease.
  • Recent discoveries have shown that CTCs are highly heterogeneous -- with individual cancer cells possessing very different molecular characteristics -- and that only a small subset of these cells actually possess the metastatic potential to spread the disease throughout the body.
  • Current technologies exist that allow these circulating cells to be captured from the blood of cancer patients, but they are not well equipped to differentiate between the various CTCs present in the blood sample
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  • . Instead, they simply count the number of CTCs in a patient sample, rather than identifying the cells that possess the highest metastatic potential. As a result, these tools are less than ideal as they are only able to provide general information on the levels of CTCs rather than a more focused understanding of the disease and its aggressiveness.
  • Researchers at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto have developed a new device that provides a way to visualize the heterogeneity of CTCs, and have published their findings in the Chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie.
  • Using nanoparticles to tag cells, this device sorts the CTCs collected in a sample into discrete subpopulations based on the phenotype of the cells, and provides a snapshot of the nature of the tumor cells present in patients' blood.
  • "Recognizing that characterizing the phenotype of circulating tumor cells is more useful for cancer management than quantitating the cells present in a blood sample, we set out to devise a method that would allow us to capture and distinguish between these cells,
  • In the lab, we were able to demonstrate that the tool was not only highly effective at differentiating these cells, but also proved to be more sensitive than the current leading methods of cellular sorting."
  • esearchers collected samples from prostate cancer patients to test the efficacy and ability of the diagnostic platform.
  • "Ultimately, we believe that this sensitive technology possesses the potential to provide more useful information about these cells, leading to better diagnoses and improved patient outcomes," notes Dr. Kelley.
  • excited to pursue new research opportunities in an effort to more accurately and less invasively diagnose and improve the health outcomes for cancer patients."
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The three types of NSA snooping that Edward Snowden revealed - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...g-that-edward-snowden-revealed snowden
shared by Trevor Brown on 13 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • For people who are more concerned with U.S. civil liberties, though, that second category of leaks -- those having to do with domestic spying -- is going to look awfully significant and deeply concerning. The dubious legal and ethical nature of these programs, not to mention their total secrecy, would seem to justify releasing them -- and casts Snowden in a favorable light. The issue of civil liberties has a huge constituency, for the very good reason that it affects everybody in the country. Some people are more passionate about it than others, but the implications touch us all.
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How Gun Control Kills | The American Conservative - 0 views

www.theamericanconservative.com/...how-gun-control-kills
shared by Austin Gerads on 13 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Here is a list of potential national tragedies that were prevented thanks to an armed populace (as compiled by the Libertarian Party):“A 1997 high school shooting in Pearl, Miss., was halted by the school’s vice principal after he retrieved the Colt .45 he kept in his truck; A 1998 middle school shooting ended when a man living next door heard gunfire and apprehended the shooter with his shotgun; A 2002 law school shooting in Grundy, Va., came to an abrupt conclusion when students carrying firearms confronted the shooter; A 2007 mall shooting in Ogden, Utah, ended when an armed off-duty police officer intervened; A 2009 workplace shooting in Houston, Texas, was halted by two coworkers who carried concealed handguns; A 2012 church shooting in Aurora, Colo., was stopped by a member of the congregation carrying a gun.”
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The world's most advanced bionic hand -- ScienceDaily - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...141106082624.htm
shared by acatlin22 on 13 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • The world's most advanced bionic hand
  • able to grasp objects intuitively and identify what he was touching, while blindfolded.
  • Researchers have created a new neural interface to provide sensory information from an artificial hand to the brain
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  • This interface is able to link the patient's nervous system with the artificial sensors, embedded in the prosthesis, enabling the user to control complex hand and finger movements.
  • researchers first had to develop a selective, implantable neuro-interface.
  • the electrodes have an interface with some areas of the nerves and not with others close by,
  • Dr Silvestro Micera . Micera and his team
  • enhanced the artificial hand with sensors that detect information about touch, which is sent in real time to the patient, allowing for the natural control of the hand.
  • next stage is to identify two or three people to test the prosthesis over some years, with all the elements being portable, wearable or implanted.
  • Dr Micera firmly believes the prosthesis will be available in ten years time.
  • NEBIAS is a continuation of intensive multi-disciplinary research in this field which started many years ago with the CYBERHAND  (Future and Emerging Technologies) (FET) FP5 Project (2002-2005)
  • You can draw on a pool of over 500 million inhabitants to find the best researchers in different fields.'
  • NEBIAS, also, was launched at the start of November 2013 and will run for four years. It receives EUR 3.4 million from the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme .
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Target quietly testing mobile payment app to rival Apple Pay | Star Tribune - 0 views

www.startribune.com/...281395391.html
shared by acatlin22 on 13 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Target last month became one of the first retailers to begin quietly testing a technology known as CurrentC, created by a group of retailers called the Merchant Customer Exchange.
  • confirmed that a group of Target’s headquarters employees has been trying out the CurrentC app in a couple of dozen Target stores around the Twin Cities.
  • Apple launched Apple Pay, which can be used at a couple of dozen major retailers such as Macy’s and McDonald’s
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  • It didn’t help matters that its system was hacked last week and that e-mail addresses of those in the pilot program were compromised, raising questions about its security.
  • U.S. Bank said users of its credit and debit cards could add them to Apple Pay and use new iPhones to pay for things directly from their accounts at the bank.
  • Rite Aid and CVS turned off the ability of customers to use Apple Pay in its stores, ostensibly because they belong to Merchant Customer Exchange, raising questions about its exclusivity agreements.
  • retailer is focused right now on adding chip-and-pin technology to its checkout lanes to provide the way for more secure credit card payments in the wake of Target’s huge data breach last year.
  • acatlin22 on 13 Nov 14
     
    At a time when the future of mobile payments is still up for grabs, Best Buy and Target have aligned themselves with a competitor to Apple Pay
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National Firearms Act of 1934 legal definition of National Firearms Act of 1934 - 0 views

legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/National+Firearms+Act+of+1934
shared by nathanskroch on 13 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • nathanskroch on 13 Nov 14
     
    "National Firearms Act of 1934"
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The Fermi Paradox | Tim Urban - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...e-fermi-paradox_b_5489415.html
shared by Matthew Maciej on 12 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Possibility 2) The galaxy has been colonized, but we just live in some desolate rural area of the galaxy. The Americas may have been colonized by Europeans long before anyone in a small Inuit tribe in far northern Canada realized it had happened. There could be an urbanization component to the interstellar dwellings of higher species, in which all the neighboring solar systems in a certain area are colonized and in communication, and it would be impractical and purposeless for anyone to deal with coming all the way out to the random part of the spiral where we live.
  • As many stars as there are in our galaxy (100 - 400 billion), there are roughly an equal number of galaxies in the observable universe -- so for every star in the colossal Milky Way, there's a whole galaxy out there. All together, that comes out to the typically quoted range of between 1022 and 1024 total stars, which means that for every grain of sand on Earth, there are 10,000 stars out there.
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Ferguson's constitutional crisis: First Amendment violations are only part of the story. - 0 views

www.slate.com/..._violations_are_only_part.html
shared by Carter Paulzine on 12 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Carter Paulzine on 12 Nov 14
     
    Info on 1st amendment violations in Ferguson
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Darwin's Theory Of Evolution - 1 views

www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com
shared by Aaron Stanoch on 12 Nov 14 - Cached
  • Darwin's Theory of Evolution - The Premise
  • Darwin's Theory of Evolution - Natural Selection
  • arwin's Theory of Evolution - A Theory In Crisis
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  • Darwin's Theory of Evolution - Slowly But Surely...
  • a plausible mechanism called "natural selection." Natural selection acts to preserve and accumulate minor advantageous genetic mutations
  • Suppose a member of a species developed a functional advantage (it grew wings and learned to fly). Its offspring would inherit that advantage and pass it on to their offspring. The inferior (disadvantaged) members of the same species would gradually die out, leaving only the superior (advantaged) members of the species.
  • [1] Thus, Darwin conceded that, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." [2] Such a complex organ would be known as an "irreducibly complex system". An irreducibly complex system is one composed of multiple parts, all of which are necessary for the system to function. If even one part is missing, the entire system will fail to function. Every individual part is integral. [3] Thus, such a system could not have evolved slowly, piece by piece. The common mousetrap is an everyday non-biological example of irreducible complexity. It is composed of five basic parts: a catch (to hold the bait), a powerful spring, a thin rod called "the hammer," a holding bar to secure the hammer in place, and a platform to mount the trap. If any one of these parts is missing, the mechanism will not work. Each individual part is integral. The mousetrap is irreducibly complex.
  • Darwin's Theory of Evolution is the widely held notion that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor:
  • Ancient Greek philosophers such as Anaximander postulated the development of life from non-life and the evolutionary descent of man from animal.
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Federal Judge Rules Police Violated First Amendment Rights Of Ferguson Protesters - 0 views

www.politicususa.com/...ights-ferguson-protesters.html
shared by Carter Paulzine on 12 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Carter Paulzine on 12 Nov 14
     
    More Ferguson stuff
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Oklahoma state report on botched lethal injection cites medical failures | US news | Th... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...thal-injection-clayton-lockett
shared by Carter Paulzine on 12 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Carter Paulzine on 12 Nov 14
     
    More info on botched execution
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Actionbioscience | Natural Selection: How Evolution Works - 0 views

www.actionbioscience.org/...futuyma.html
shared by Aaron Stanoch on 12 Nov 14 - Cached
  • Some take natural selection to mean survival of the fittest. How does this slogan sometimes lead to misconceptions? Futuyma: “Survival of the fittest” is a slogan that is really very misleading. First of all, it’s not an adequate description of what really goes on in nature for two reasons:
  • Sometimes there isn’t a “fittest” type. There may be several different types that are equally fit for different reasons. Perhaps they’re adapted to different facets of the environment. One is not going to replace the other because each has its proper place in the environment. Moreover, it’s not just a matter of survival. Natural selection is a difference in reproductive success that involves both the ability to survive until reproductive age and then the capacity to reproduce.
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ACLU challenges Oklahoma over first amendment violation in execution | Law | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...st-amendment-botched-execution
shared by Carter Paulzine on 12 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Carter Paulzine on 12 Nov 14
     
    Reporters were not allowed to view the "botched execution" once things began to go wrong.
  • Carter Paulzine on 12 Nov 14
     
    Reporters were not allowed to view the "botched execution" once things began to go wrong.
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