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Choose Your Own Adventure

Choose Your Own Adventure

The Colonoscopy Experience Today, as Kathy finished her last radiation therapy appointment, I had my first screening colonoscopy - a right of passage for new 50 year olds. Although a bit of a personal issue, I'm known for my transparency and I'm happy to share the experience so that others approaching 50 know what to expect. The preparation is the hardest part. At 7pm the night before the procedure, the real challenge begins. A few hours after the laxative, the intestinal rumbling begins. The procedure itself is the easy part. I received propofol, which works quickly and clears quickly. The Boston Endoscopy Center, where I had my procedure, uses an electronic record called Gcare, which captures images and reports. "Medications: MAC Anesthesia Pain rating: 0/10 Indications: Screening for colon cancer Procedure: The procedure, indications, preparation and potential complications were explained to the patient, who indicated his understanding and signed the corresponding consent forms. Done for another 10 years!

Our Unsustainable Culture of Medical Specialization - Neal Emery Patients with multiple chronic diseases receive overall suboptimal care, and their disjointed treatment plans result in redundancies and inefficiencies that put disproportionate pressure on our health care system. Morris MacMatzen/Reuters Adam Smith would have described our health care system not with his invisible hand, but with a pin-maker. In The Wealth of Nations, a parable about a pin-maker elucidates the benefits of division of labor: while a person working alone scarcely makes 20 pins in a day, a team of 10 that divides up shaping, sharpening, and painting pins can produce tens of thousands of pins per day. Workers become more efficient as they specialize by developing a skill, creating new technology to aid them, and not wasting time switching between tasks. Our medical system mirrors this 200-year-old model: just as each member of Smith's pin-making team masters discrete tasks, each doctor masters an organ system, surgery, or aspect of patient care.

Most with celiac disease unaware of it, others go gluten-free without diagnosis Public release date: 31-Jul-2012 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: Brian Kilennewsbureau@mayo.edu 507-284-5005Mayo Clinic ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Roughly 1.8 million Americans have celiac disease, but around 1.4 million of them are unaware that they have it, a Mayo Clinic-led analysis of the condition's prevalence has found. Researchers have estimated the rate of diagnosed and undiagnosed celiac disease at similar levels prior to this study, but this is the most definitive study on the issue. Celiac disease is a digestive disorder brought on when genetically susceptible people eat wheat, rye and barley. "There are a lot of people on a gluten-free diet, and it's not clear what the medical need for that is," Dr. To determine its prevalence, researchers combined blood tests confirming celiac disease with interviews from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) nationwide population sample survey called National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. About Mayo Clinic

Favorite QGIS Resources of the Moment | geoMusings I’ve been dabbling more with Quantum GIS (QGIS) lately. I’m not doing anything particularly sophisticated but it’s a great viewer for some data types (SpatiaLite, GeoJSON) that aren’t supported by my commercial desktop GIS so it’s helping me validate outputs of some applications I’m writing. While I’ll never be a real cartographer, I am interested in doing a little more. I’ll start with three blogs: Anita Graser (@underdarkgis) Nathan Woodrow (@madmanwoo) The MapBox Blog (@mapbox) The MapBox blog takes some explaining. Outside of that, I set up a Google Alert for QGIS which feeds me all kinds of things: posts from other blogs, mailing entries, StackExchange questions, and so on.

10 Tips for a More Beautiful and Functional Home Office If you work from home, you owe it to yourself to set up a proper office space. It's vital you have somewhere to concentrate that's separate from your home life — and is hopefully a nice space to spend time in. A good working space is even more important if you operate your small business out of your home. To help you out on this rather specific front, we have pulled together some useful tips from experienced home-workers and chatted with home office expert Lisa Kanarek, founder of WorkingNaked.com. Also keep in mind that having a home office can entitle you to certain tax breaks, so your investment can end up right back in your pocket. SEE ALSO: 10 Awesome Accessories to Organize Your Office Whether you're just getting started working from your abode or are a home-working veteran, take a look through the slideshow of useful advice. Image courtesy of Nick Keppol

Ugandan officials face Ebola outbreak By the CNN Wire Staff (CNN) – Ugandan authorities did not initially detect an Ebola outbreak because patients weren’t showing typical symptoms of the lethal virus, the nation’s health minister told CNN Sunday. Patients had fevers and were vomiting, but did not show other typical symptoms like hemorrhaging, Health Minister Dr. Christine Ondoa said. A team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was on the way to Uganda to provide laboratory support to officials dealing with the virus, which health authorities say has left at least 14 people dead in the east African nation this month. A medic who was treating victims is among the dead, Ondoa said. Officials are trying to determine the extent of the outbreak, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said Sunday. About five people from the Atlanta-based centers were expected to join a group of CDC staffers who are permanently based in Uganda, Skinner said. A total of 20 cases of the virus have been recorded, officials said Saturday.

Should patients be able to control their own records? Giving patients control of their medical records may sound scary to many doctors, but it could reduce workload and improve outcomes, Peter Davies reports Every general practice in England will have to offer patients online access to their care records by 2015, according to the government’s information strategy for the NHS published in May.1 Currently only 1% do so. As the Department of Health acknowledges, this represents “a challenge to the culture and practices of some health and care organisations and professionals.” But advocates of patient access to records now want to go further. This may sound counterintuitive to many doctors. Historically, medical records have been regarded as the property of clinicians or their institution. Projects under way in the NHS are exploring possibilities.

Large collection of Free Microsoft eBooks for you, including: SharePoint, Visual Studio, Windows Phone, Windows 8, Office 365, Office 2010, SQL Server 2012, Azure, and more. - Microsoft SMS&P Partner Community Blog - By Eric Ligman Throughout the year I try to share resources and information with you that I think will be helpful for you. Often times these resources will include links to free eBooks that we make available on a variety of topics. Today, I thought I would post a large collection of eBooks for you here so that you can find them in one place and consume them as you see fit. Also, if you find this list helpful, please share it with your peers and colleagues so that they too can benefit from these resources. Due to the incredible popularity of this post, I’ve added a second post on even MORE free Microsoft eBooks and Resource Kits available for you, in case you are interested. I hope you find these resources to be helpful in learning about and using the various solutions and technologies referenced. Did you find this information helpful? By the way, another great place to find free books is the E-Book Gallery for Microsoft Technologies on the TechNet Wiki. Thanks again for being a reader of my blog!

Anything but R-bitrary: ggplot2: A little twist on back-to-back bar charts Sangyoon Lee Background While thinking about ways to represent incoming and outgoing flows in a business process, I thought about using export-import charts like the one shown here in the Learning R blog. My Solution In the Learning R article, the author chooses to show multiple categories of import and export using stacked bars. In the below example, I use the same subset of data as in the motivating post. First, load the necessary packages. For convenient and powerful data manipulation, plyr and reshape provide functions like ddply and melt. Next, import the data, calculate the trade balance (export - import), and melt the data for ggplot2. trade <- read.csv("trade.csv", header = TRUE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE) balance <- ddply(trade, . After the melt step, add another line to aggregate over BEC. trade.a <- ddply(trade.m, c("Time", "variable"), summarise, value = sum(value)) At this point, the data will look like this: We step through one layer at a time. Layer 1: Start with export bars.

MetaWatch STRATA: the Smartwatch for the iPhone 4S & Android by Meta Watch Strata, is a smart sportwatch designed to compliment your smartphone and give you Hands Freedom™. Supporting a Dual-Mode Bluetooth 4.0** connection to your iPhone 4s, or a Bluetooth 2.1 (SPP) connection to your Android smartphone, you can check messages, see who’s calling, control music, view weather, and more, all from your wrist. Although still a work in progress, a first look is available in Update #6. They look awesome! These are available only at the "Susan Kare Signature Model" pledge level, you don't need to choose now, we'll ask you which one you want at the end. They are a limited edition, and will be signed and numbered. Just as the MSL mission lands successfully on Mars (Yay!) Engineering and Development What you see in the video above is our latest functional prototype showing you demonstrations of how we imagine the ways one can use Strata once this project is completed. To get this far, we have done quite a lot of work already: Step 2: Industrial Design: Done! Features

Manifesto for Agile Software Development The best local SIM cards in Europe Donald Strachan replies If you only want to make a few calls and send the odd text, it is usually not worth changing your UK SIM. For example, O2’s standard rates are 24p per minute to call, and 7p to text if you use your phone in France. That’s cheaper than many domestic networks. It is another story with data, however. The cap on data prices is due to fall again on July 1, to €0.20/17p per megabyte (Mb), but local deals are much cheaper. In Italy, TIM (tim.it) and Vodafone (vodafone.it) offer the best coverage. Vodafone (vodafone.es) has the SMART 12 package, with 1 Gb of internet, 60 texts and an hour of talktime. In France data is much cheaper with a prepaid SIM (a carte prépayée sans engagement). Turkey is outside the regulated EU zone. Pretty much anywhere, a new local SIM costs only nominal fee, and comes with a small amount of call credit pre-loaded onto the card. Ask the experts Our Q&A service allows you can pick the brains of our experts at home and abroad.

Facts About Dihydrogen Monoxide Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid. Its basis is the highly reactive hydroxyl radical, a species shown to mutate DNA, denature proteins, disrupt cell membranes, and chemically alter critical neurotransmitters. The atomic components of DHMO are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl Alcohol. For more detailed information, including precautions, disposal procedures and storage requirements, refer to one of the Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) available for DHMO: Should I be concerned about Dihydrogen Monoxide? A similar study conducted by U.S. researchers Patrick K. Why haven't I heard about Dihydrogen Monoxide before? Good question. What are some of the dangers associated with DHMO? What are some uses of Dihydrogen Monoxide? Absolutely! Can using DHMO improve my marriage?

How to use FF Chartwell Primarily suitable for Adobe Creative Suite, FF Chartwell for print uses OpenType ligatures to transform strings of numbers automatically into charts. The data remains in a text box, allowing for easy updates and styling. It’s really simple to use; you just type a series of numbers like: ‘10+13+37+40’, turn on Stylistic Alternates or Stylistic Set 1 and a graph is automatically created. To help get you started using FF Chartwell we’ve created this video tutorial and here are some simple steps: ONE — Firstly always make sure the letter spacing is set to “0” (zero) TWO — Using the values 0-100, type the values, then use “+” to combine them into one chart. THREE — Want to bring a bit of color to your work? FOUR — Turn on Stylistic Alternates or Stylistic Set 1 and enjoy! To see the original data all you need to do is turn off Stylistic Set or Stylistic Alternates.

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