12/28/2011 02:13 PM CST
Dr. James Bender is a former Army psychologist who deployed to Iraq as the brigade psychologist for the 1st Cavalry Division’s 4th Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Hood, Texas. During his deployment, he traveled through Southern Iraq, from Basra to Baghdad. He writes a monthly post for the DCoE Blog on psychological health concerns [...]
Link: Frontline Psych with Doc Bender: Getting Psychologically Fit in the New Year
DrugCite is a useful database of information about the prescription and over-the-counter medication, allowing you to look up the possible side effects of specific drugs and see statistics about their reported problems.
If you were to look up the allergy medicine Allegra, you’d find that the highest number of problems with the drug were reported around 2005, and that the majority of problems were neurological. DrugCite provides simple graphs that break down the number of reported issues related to the medicine in question and cross-reference that information to provide other useful statistics. Each drug report will also tell you its age, the number of adverse reports over its lifespan, and a gender breakdown of that report. Over 40 years, Allegra only received 2,710 reports. That’s only about 68 per year, and that’s out of millions of people. While low numbers don’t guarantee you anything, and these statistics are only related to reported issues, if you’re worried about taking a specific type of medication it can help to see how rare certain problems are to make yourself a little more comfortable.
Award-winning blues rock star, guitar hero and singer-songwriter Joe Bonamassa s new release, Joe Bonamassa Live From The Royal Albert Hall, a 2-DVD live set, just made it s debut at #6 on Billboard Magazine s Top Music DVD Chart and #10 on the Top Blues Album Chart. The film, released on October 6 by Bonamassa s record company J&R Adventures, captures the intensity and excitement of the May 2009 show that marked Bonamassa s headlining debut at arguably the most prestigious concert venue in the world. May 4, 2009 was a day 20 years in the making, says Bonamassa. I have never been so honored in my life. It was truly larger than the sum of its parts.
At the Hall, Bonamassa had the added honor of being joined onstage by the legendary Eric Clapton. The Guitar Buzz calls it, A must-have DVD for any Joe Bonamassa fan and frankly, any person who plays the guitar and appreciates instrumental mastery at work. Joe Bonamassa is to the guitar what Liberace was to the piano. He s a 6-string maestro. And Brian D. Holland writes in Guitar International, It s not only a momentous occasion for Joe Bonamassa, it s one for bluesrock in general.
This double DVD set, which features a twelve-camera high definition, surround sound shoot produced by Kevin Shirley (Led Zeppelin, Black Crowes, Aerosmith) and an exclusive interview and behind-the-scenes footage with Bonamassa, presents that magical night in full for posterity, and for all the fans that couldn t be among the roughly 5,000 concertgoers filling the seats.
Bonamassa performs with a combination of searing excellence and showmanship that underlined exactly why he has risen to the top of the most punishing circuit in popular music today.
A research team led by the University of California Berkeley found that a small group of particularly infectious people can ignite explosive epidemics of diseases such as SARS and smallpox. While it has long been known that some people spread disease easier than others, the study found that the proportion of infected people that do not infect anyone else is higher than previously thought.
What characterizes a superspreader depends on the disease and whether he or she has a job that brings him or her into close contact with a large number of people. Other factors are whether you have a strong immune system or concurrent infections. For diseases like SARS, major outbreaks occur when it infects a superspreader, who could infect 10, 20, or more people.
According to the researchers, the study data indicates that health agencies need to pay close attention not only to the proportion of patients not transmitting the disease, but to those who transmit to many others.
“Need a skin graft? A new trachea? A heart patch? Turn on your printer, and let it spit one out. A group of researchers hope printers’ whirs and buzzes will soon be saving lives. 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. So far, they’ve made tubes similar to human blood vessels andsheets of heart muscle cells, printed in three dimensions on a special printer. ‘I think this is going to be a biggie,’ said Glenn D. Prestwich, the University of Utah professor who developed the bio-paper. ‘A lot of things are going to be a pain in the butt to print, but I think we can do
livers and kidneys as well.’”
Learn more in Wired News.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,69701,00.html
From: Future Brief