MedWorm provides a medical RSS filtering service. Over 6000 RSS medical sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest medical blog items that have been tagged with 'blogosphere'. Sat, 03 Sep 2011 01:50:37 +0100 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4934120&cid=t_100645_87_f&fid=36438&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FCato-at-liberty%2F%7E3%2FcJTiMD0imrw%2F By Julian SanchezIn his famous “Petition of the Candlemakers,” the great classical liberal thinker Frederic Bastiat lampooned the protectionist arguments of his day by imagining a campaign—launched by the producers of artificial illumination—against “ruinous competition” from that “merciless” scab… the sun. Via In These Times and the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog, I see that someone forgot to explain to the Newspaper Guild and National Writers Union that Bastiat’s petition was, you know, satire. Borrowing a page from writer Jon Tasini, whose meritless lawsuit against the Huffington Post was roundly and justly ridiculed back in April, those two groups are advocating a boycott of the opinion and news site. They complain that, though HuffPo... Cato-at-liberty blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4934120 Tue, 14 Jun 2011 18:53:24 +0100 4934120 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4902700&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2011%2F06%2Fweb-vido-chats-as-an-important-component-of-patient-care.html This article instead emphasizes the need for a "more equal dialogue between patient and clinician and improve the nature of the relationship."  Some patients tend to get overwhelmed in a formal medical setting and may not address all of their problems with  the physician. They may also think that "the doctor is too busy to bother with my petty complaints." With video chat, the patient remains on his or her home turf and hence the discussion may be conducted on a more equal footing. (Source: Lab Soft News) Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4902700 Mon, 06 Jun 2011 18:47:23 +0100 4902700 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4813681&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2011%2F05%2Fipad-launching-the-two-screen-tech-revolution.html I have been using "two-screen technology" frequently since I acquired my iPad. In my particular case, this use-case could be called "independent two-screen technology." When I am watching, say, a Netflix movie on my television, I will frequently search for more details about the film (e.g., reviews) on the web using my tablet device. However, the two-screen revolution involves a more integrated approach and was described in a recent article (see: Is the iPad Launching the Two-Screen Revolution?): iPad owners are starting to see more and more apps that encourage the use of the device in conjunction with other screens. I’m not talking about remote desktop apps that allow the iPad to act as a mirror of other machines; I specifically mean apps that allow the iPad to act a... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4813681 Wed, 11 May 2011 14:04:21 +0100 4813681 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4734680&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2011%2F04%2Fweb-search-algorithms-as-a-type-of-journalism.html Google executives have continuously emphasized that the company is in the search business and not in the content business. This assertion positions it as a neutral, valueless arbiter of efficient web search. However and with the growing sophistication of search algorithms, their role now appears to be much less neutral. The "values" mediated and executed by the invisible, Google search algorithms are commented on by Jonathan Stray in his blog (see: The editorial search engine). Below is an excerpt from his note. Read the whole thing it you have time -- it's worth the effort. It’s impossible to build a computer system that helps people find or filter information without at some point making editorial judgements. That’s because search and collaborative filtering algorithms ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4734680 Thu, 21 Apr 2011 11:35:27 +0100 4734680 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4704966&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2011%2F04%2Fpathologist-blogger-sought-to-maintain-pathtalkorg.html Dr. Kenneth Youens has emailed me that he is seeking a pathologist-blogger to take over responsibility for Pathtalk.org that he and colleagues developed as pathology residents. Below is his note. --BAF Pathtalk.org is a multiple-author pathology blog created in 2007 by a group of pathology residents for the purpose of providing an interesting, engaging and informative collection of posts on a variety of pathology-related topics.  The list of authors was expanded in 2009 to include several practicing pathologists.  Working together, we have been able to provide semi-regular posts to the site for several years, while distributing the work of creating content among the blog’s authors.  The readership of pathtalk.org has grown steadily, and several hundred readers follow up... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4704966 Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:14:29 +0100 4704966 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4677125&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2011%2F04%2Ftumore-on-zite.html Last Thursday, I posted an enthusiastic note about an iPad app called Zite. It enables you to create a customized e-magazine to read on your device (see: Zite as an Example of the Future of E-Magazines). In response, Mike Lougee posted this comment: It appears that some of the big publishers, from whom Zite is using news content, are so unhappy that they're sending cease-and-desist letters to Zite. Presumably the smaller, non-commercial publishers that are described in this post are happy to be displayed via Zite. Mike's alert was helpful and timely. Here's an excerpt from an article that provides more information of this issue (see: Note to Media: Don’t Fight Zite, Learn From It): In an entirely too-predictable development, a group of media outlets has sent a cease-and-desis... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4677125 Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:48:06 +0100 4677125 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4664487&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2011%2F04%2Ffthe-web-of-information-evolves-to-a-web-of-things.html A recent blog note contained a powerful idea. The current web (i.e., internet) is evolving into a larger network that will allow participation by "things" by which is meant inanimate objects such as roads, bridges, or even the door to your house (see: How the Internet of Things is Changing the Way We Work). Below is an excerpt from it: Several years ago, before the Web had become as ever-present as it is now, Wal-Mart was the shining example of a future where inanimate objects communicated, aka the Internet of Things. The company had a plan to implement RFID tags to better optimize its supply chain. The problem? The RFID technology could not be programmed to exchange data. In the past few years, we've seen the emergence of the application programming interface, or API. APIs h... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4664487 Fri, 01 Apr 2011 14:24:47 +0100 4664487 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4592396&cid=t_100645_87_f&fid=39187&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgetbetterhealth.com%2Fcall-for-submissions-grand-rounds-at-better-health%2F2011.03.15 Grand Rounds will be hosted right here at “home” at Better Health on Tuesday, March 22th, 2011. Please send your blog-post submissions via e-mail by 12:00AM midnight CT on Saturday, March 19th, to: maria.gifford@getbetterhealth.com. Please include:  ”Submission for Grand Rounds” in the subject line of your e-mail. Your name (blog author), the name of your blog, and the URL of your specific blog-post submission. A short summary (1 to 3 sentences) of your blog post. There’s no specific theme for this edition of Grand Rounds — just send us something really smart or deep or profound that will move us and make us all think harder about health and medicine. For more information, please see the Grand Rounds Submissions Guidelines. We look forward to ... Better Health blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4592396 Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:00:36 +0100 4592396 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4414546&cid=t_100645_107_f&fid=36672&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencebase.com%2Fscience-blog%2Fseven-slices-of-science-stuff.html from David Bradley Vuja de – Thinking outside the box with new eyes? Haven't we see this managerial psychobabble before or is it just vuja de? Alchemist Newsletter – An element close to every Alchemist's heart, quicksilver, or more properly mercury, featured in the chemistry news roundup this week, as does the creation of life from the primordial soup and how that may have begun. In the world of agrichemicals there is a possible sting in the tale for a relatively new class of pesticides, although no definitive evidence is yet available. In materials science tiny, but microscopic particles can undergo self-assembly it seems, while depressing news emerges from Europe regarding the lack of efficacy of an antidepressant drug marketed there. Finally, a new, free chemical... Sciencebase Science Blog blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4414546 Sat, 29 Jan 2011 16:00:08 +0100 4414546 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4298804&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F12%2Fprediction-for-2011-apps-go-corporate.html In an end-of-the-year article discussing IT trends, the WSJ tucked-in what I consider a highly significant and insightful prediction under the "apps" category (see: The Rise of Apps, iPad and Android; subscription required). I copy it below: Coming next: Apps go corporate. AT&T, business-software developer SAP AG and other companies are working on apps that can help their employees track sales, monitor systems or check-out customers without being tied to their stations. The quick adoption of tablets by business users is helping fuel the trend. I have posted a number of notes about the usefulness of smartphones in healthcare delivery and health education. I have also discussed previously the type of programs that run on smartphones -- generally referred to as apps (see: New De... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4298804 Wed, 29 Dec 2010 16:25:21 +0100 4298804 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4055963&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F10%2Fmfinally-an-insightful-review-of-the-new-movie-the-social-network.html I have been wanting to post a note about the new movie, The Social Network, a fictionalized account of the life of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. I have not seen it yet but do not consider most of the reviews I have seen thus far particularly insightful.  Many of the authors have used their reviews as an opportunity to discuss the general topic of social networking beyond Facebook. At long last, Fred Vogelstein of Wired has scored a home run (see: Why Mark Zuckerberg Should Like The Social Network). The question uppermost in my mind regarding this movie, aside from its entertainment value, is why does it matter in the larger scheme of things. Vogelstein, not surprisingly a tech writer, answers in the following way: To me, what’s important about The Social Network isn’t... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4055963 Mon, 11 Oct 2010 12:26:51 +0100 4055963 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4040563&cid=t_100645_87_f&fid=39187&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgetbetterhealth.com%2Fo-magazine-2-of-4-best-doctors-blogs-are-by-better-health-bloggers%2F2010.10.07 Check out this preview article (dated October 20, 2010) by Madonna Behen on Oprah’s “O” Magazine website entitled “4 Doctor’s Blogs to Read Now,” where two of the four doctors’ blogs listed are regular Better Health content contributors. They are family physician Lucy Hornstein, M.D., author of “Musings of a Dinosaur,” and internist, cardiologist, and cardiac electrophysiologist Wesby Fisher, M.D., author of “Dr. Wes.” An excerpt: You thought physicians were robotic and cold? A new epidemic of personal blogs written by docs might change your mind. These medical scribes are boldly posting their real feelings (and worst fears) on the web, for all the world to see. Their journals provide us patients with an informative and hu... Better Health blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4040563 Thu, 07 Oct 2010 16:30:50 +0100 4040563 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=4003445&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F09%2Fprediction-that-blogs-will-merge-with-mainstream-media.html It's been about three years since I posted my last note about blogs and blogging. I view myself as a professional blogger (see: Professional Blogs as Publication Vehicles for Physicians in Academic Clinical Tracks; Professional Blogs as Meta Information Resources). By this I mean someone trained in a particular industry or discipline, pathology and the clinical labs in my case, who then focuses on news and events in that industry, A recent article raised some interesting points about blogs and I provide an excerpt from it below (see: Blogging is Alive and Well, Says Report):While blogging was still a major topic of discussion just a few years ago, things have been rather quiet around it in recent times. Even in the so-called blogosphere, we don't talk a lot about the actual activit... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=4003445 Mon, 27 Sep 2010 15:33:26 +0100 4003445 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3994117&cid=t_100645_122_f&fid=36582&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FSharpBrains%2F%7E3%2FfbJRjXT7_c0%2F We will be hosting the September 27th edition of Scientia Pro Publica, the biweekly blog carnival that “showcases the finest science, medical and environment writing published in the blogosphere”. If you write a blog about science, medicine or the environment and would like to share your writing or photography with a large and appreciative audience, please submit a good recent blog post no later than end of September 25th, using this automated submission form. Remember to visit us on September 27th! (Source: SharpBrains) SharpBrains blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3994117 Thu, 23 Sep 2010 11:30:41 +0100 3994117 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3865470&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F08%2Fplagerism-and-the-digital-era.html It appears that many of today's students do not consider verbatim copying of information from the web as plagiarism. Although this conclusion surprised me, it did not astonish me. Here's an excerpt from the article (see: Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age): At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student’s copying [from the web] was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web; when confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know how to change purple text to black....Professors used to deal with plagiarism by admonishing students to give credit to others and to follow the style guide for citations, and pretty much left it at that. But these cases — typical ones, according to writin... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3865470 Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:50:37 +0100 3865470 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3858156&cid=t_100645_87_f&fid=39187&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgetbetterhealth.com%2Fyoung-doctors-who-lie%2F2010.08.11 This is something: A study published in the July 20, 2010 Annals of Internal Medicine finds that 5 percent of residency applications contain plagiarized content. The study from Boston’s Brigham & Woman’s Hospital is based on the personal statements of nearly 5,000 residency applicants that were matched against a database of published content. The authors comment that the study is limited, among other things, by the fact that it was done in just one institution. It makes me wonder if the number is artificially high or potentially too low. So why would medical students lie? (more…) *This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts* (Source: Better Health) Better Health blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3858156 Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:00:14 +0100 3858156 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3816400&cid=t_100645_87_f&fid=39187&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgetbetterhealth.com%2Fkiller-grand-rounds-from-down-under%2F2010.08.03 Better Health’s Grand Rounds this week is hosted by the ever-so-crafty Life in the Fast Lane team of Australian physicians at the Utopian College of Emergency for Medicine. These docs “take great pleasure in sharing their medical experiences, clinical knowledge and insights into waiting-room medicine with health-conscious technophiles to facilitate the learning process by providing diverse and hopefully entertaining reading material.” It’s always worth a read (and a chuckle), no doubt. With the theme of ”Killer Posts” (just a hint — hate to blow the surprise), this edition of Grand Rounds is sure to educate in more ways than one! Experience it HERE. (Source: Better Health) Better Health blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3816400 Tue, 03 Aug 2010 16:00:19 +0100 3816400 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3798609&cid=t_100645_109_f&fid=34750&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpsychcentral.com%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2010%2F07%2F28%2Fshirley-sherrod-and-the-decline-of-decency%2F The airwaves, newspapers and blogosphere were abuzz this week with the fiasco involving Shirley Sherrod, the USDA worker forced to resign over a fabricated racial controversy. The original slur was initiated by a blogger who posted a misleading video clip of a speech by Ms. Sherrod. Ultimately, Sherrod was cleared of any racist leanings, and we must now hope for some genuine soul-searching among all those who failed the most elementary tests of fairness, accuracy and decency in responding to the original charges. But the other day, amidst all the commentary on Shirley Sherrod, a short article buried inside the Sunday New York Times caught my eye. Innocuously entitled, “No Air-Conditioning, and Happy,”1 the article concerned a certain agricultural scientist and his wife who “…do not... World of Psychology blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3798609 Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:12:24 +0100 3798609 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3767331&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F07%2Fiphone-and-the-walled-garden.html App phones (see: Does the Smartphone/App Phone Provide More Functionality Than the PC?), also commonly referred to as smart phones, have rapidly become a critical tool for professionals of various types but particularly for physicians. Think of the devices as mobile computers. Then combine this concept with the increasing accessibility of on-line medical records as well as the complete medical literature and medical textbooks. Newer cell phones can support video conferencing, enabling on-line visits with patients from anywhere in the world. The cell phone was quickly adopted by most physicians and the next-gen app phone will enjoy even greater success.Most people will concede that the iPhone was the first and best app phone. However, Apple has established a significant barrier to new app a... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3767331 Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:03:46 +0100 3767331 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3585862&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F05%2Ffour-addiction-to-digital-networks-and-social-media.html The word addiction is always used in the pejorative sense -- no one brags about their addiction to anything at cocktail parties. Nick Carr, who blogs over at RoughType, takes on the contrarians and social critics who bemoan the addiction of many/most of us to the web. social networks, blogs, on-line news, or on-line games (see: Not addiction; dependency). Here is an excerpt from his note:The problem with the addiction metaphor [to describe use of digital networks and social media]...is that it presents the normal as abnormal and hence makes it easy for us to distance ourselves from our own behavior and its consequences. By dismissing talk of "Internet addiction" as rhetorical overkill, which it is, we also avoid undertaking an honest examination of how deeply our media devices ha... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3585862 Fri, 21 May 2010 12:25:34 +0100 3585862 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3560232&cid=t_100645_87_f&fid=39187&url=http%3A%2F%2Fgetbetterhealth.com%2Fmassive-medical-blogosphere-in-china%2F2010.05.13 In the medical blogosphere, we talk a lot about medical community sites such as Sermo.com, Ozmosis.com or Doctors.net.uk and we always mention these as huge communities. While Sermo has over 110,000 physician members, the Chinese dxy.cn has over 1.4 million professionals on its site. It has a blog, a conference site, a pharmacy channel, biomedical business information platform, it covers more than a 100 specialties, and offers thousands of jobs. I tried to translate the mission statement with Google Translate: Lilac Garden Biomedical Science and Technology Network ( DXY.CN ) was established in July 23, 2000, and since its inception has been committed for the majority of medical professionals to provide a specialized life science platform. With professionalism and strong accumulation and th... Better Health blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3560232 Thu, 13 May 2010 15:30:14 +0100 3560232 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3552304&cid=t_100645_109_f&fid=34750&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpsychcentral.com%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2010%2F05%2F11%2Fbest-of-our-blogs-may-11-2010%2F As I’m writing this, I’m watching the rain drops slide down my window. It’s a rainy spring day and I’m loving it. As someone who’s not a big fan of gray skies and cold, I’ll admit it’s the not the weather that’s making me smile. It’s not Mother’s Day or Mental Health month that’s got me either. So what is it? It’s the realization that we really do have control over our own lives. We can create our experiences and not feel ashamed, guilty or sad that we don’t have the life someone else or society told us we’re supposed to have. This may mean redefining mental illness or not believing we need to have the so-called “perfect” body and instead embracing a different type of reality. A reality that&#82... World of Psychology blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3552304 Tue, 11 May 2010 12:08:08 +0100 3552304 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3530044&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F05%2Fis-google-making-us-stupid-or-is-the-problem-a-broader-issue.html Nick Carr who blogs over at Rough Type created an intellectual firestorm when he published an article in the Atlantic magazine (July/August 2008) that subsequently appeared in the magazine's web site. He basically asked the question whether web search by Google was rewiring our brains and causing us to avoid reading lengthy printed books. The specific question he posed provocatively was whether Google was making us stupid. This same question interests me and I have commented on it at length in this blog. I have now come to personally believe that our attention/distraction problem today is far broader than merely a web-search issue and being driven by the host of new technologies now available to all of us. This point was driven home for me by a recent article discussing a fashion magaz... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3530044 Tue, 04 May 2010 12:00:00 +0100 3530044 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3483073&cid=t_100645_134_f&fid=36052&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.daily-diabetic.com%2F50226711%2Fdiabetes_cookbook_a_7_day_meal_plan_with_diabetes.php Photo CreditIf you are living with diabetes, a lot of your energy and time goes to planning, selecting and deciding what to eat. That, and considering that you don't want to eat the same thing over and over again. Of course you don't want to ditch the nutritional value of your diabetes-friendly food. One thing that can help you is a diabetes cookbook. Like some idea? There's a new one featured at Diabetes Daily called A 7 Day Meal Plan with Diabetes. ... (Source: Daily Diabetic) Daily Diabetic blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3483073 Mon, 19 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0100 3483073 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3476096&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F04%2Fjules-ebook.html Jules Berman, the noted pathologist-informatician, has just emailed me the following information: I have just self-published a satire entitled "Machiavelli's Laboratory." It's a book about ethics in science written from the perspective of an unethical character. I had a lot of fun writing it but it actually provides a historical view of both science and medicine. It contains various references to informatics topics such as HISs, CPOE, and EMRs. The ebook can be viewed and downloaded at no cost in HTML or PDF formats.Jules has also just completed a textbook that will be published in a few months by CRC/Routledge called Methods in Medical Informatics. It provides equivalent scripts in Perl, Python and Ruby for common informatics tasks than any lab should be able to a... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3476096 Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:34:00 +0100 3476096 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3472060&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F04%2Fthmore-discussion-about-the-fdamedwatch-billboard.html In a recent note, I discussed a billboard apparently placed by FDA's MedWatch in some unspecified urban site soliciting feedback about "shoddy" electronic records (see: MedWatch Billboard Spotted Requesting Reports about "Shoddy" EMRs). In my note, I commented on what I perceived to be the ineffectiveness of such a local approach when reaching out to patients. Dr. Federico Monzon responded with the following comment:The ad doesn't specify that it is directed to patients. Health professionals could be the target of the billboard. As you mention, healthcare workers would be more likely to know about "shoddy" EMRs but they might not know where to complain if they think the EMR could be potentially impacting patient care.Federico has a good point. I s... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3472060 Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:41:00 +0100 3472060 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3460409&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F04%2Fjournal-of-pathology-informatics.html The Association for Pathology Informatics (API) has launched an on-line journal called the Journal of Pathology Informatics (JPI). Here's a mission statement about the journal copied from its home page:The Journal of Pathology Informatics (JPI) is an open access peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the advancement of pathology informatics. This is the official journal of the Association for Pathology Informatics (API). The journal aims to publish broadly about pathology informatics and freely disseminate all articles worldwide. This journal is of interest to pathologists, informaticians, academics, researchers, health IT specialists, information officers, IT staff, vendors, and anyone with an interest in informatics. We encourage submissions from anyone with an interest in the field of p... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3460409 Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:03:28 +0100 3460409 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3454218&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F04%2Fteaching-patients-to-say-no-to-diagnostics-and-therapeutic-suggestions.html I believe that the formula for improving the health of our population and reducing healthcare costs is two-fold: firstly, encouraging patients to take more ownership of their own health and secondly, encouraging them to initially say "no" to diagnostic and therapeutic recommendations from their physicians. The latter part of this approach was discussed in a recent New York Times column by David Leonhardt (see: In Medicine, the Power of No). Below is an excerpt from it. Read the whole column if you can -- I only quote a very small part of it. The federal government is now starting to build the institutions that will try to reduce the soaring growth of health care costs. There will be a group to compare the effectiveness of different treatments, a so-called Medicare innovation cen... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3454218 Fri, 09 Apr 2010 11:42:10 +0100 3454218 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3441078&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F04%2Fmthe-hypermediated-postbook-book-meets-virtual-search.html Some forms of the book, as we have known it in the past, will transition into the hypermediated post-book book. This new type of book, discussed in a previous note, is beginning to look more and more like a computer application (see: Some Observations about the "Post-Book Book and Pathology Conferences). Also, as presented in this previous note, Google and other search engines are in the process of becoming virtual publishers of content. They will be able to not only provide a search engine retrieval page (SERP) but also have the capability of creating a patchwork quilt of data snippets from the web.  In so doing, they will be creating a new, original, and useful meta-document (see: Google as an Enabler and Protector of Global Information Exchange). Google maintains that it is ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3441078 Tue, 06 Apr 2010 12:19:44 +0100 3441078 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3420769&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F03%2Fgoogle-as-an-enabler-and-protector-of-global-information-exchange.html This article begins to address some of the key questions that we are facing in the internet era such as the following: What is a publisher? What is a virtual publisher? What is content? What is a media company? Should virtual publishers be required to pay for content? How does protecting content and providing access to it differ from publishing it? What is censorship? To what extent do western democracies practice censorship? Is content search on a global basis more important than the creation of the original information? To what extent does open internet search destabilize totalitarian countries like China?China is only a very small portion of Google's advertising business today. Europe, on the other hand, provides a major component of its revenue stream and can only grow in the futur... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3420769 Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:03:15 +0100 3420769 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3408646&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F03%2Fgoogles-longterm-china-strategy-a-couple-of-ideas.html By now, most people have heard that Google is disengaging from its search business in China, one of the largest markets in the world. The reasons for this action are, first, that China is requiring Google to censor web search for clients in the country. Secondly, Google is stewing about cyberattacks on its software originating in China that may have had government sponsorship. These points, plus others, were detailed in the recent news story focusing about Sergey Brinn, one of the founders of the company (see: Brin Drove Google to Pull Back in China; subscription required).Below is an excerpt from the story:       Google Inc. co-founder Sergey Brin pushed the Internet giant to take the risky step of abandoning its China-based search engine as that countr... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3408646 Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:00:00 +0100 3408646 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3362585&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F03%2Fblogging-and-the-dalai-lama-question.html One of my favorite stories, probably apocryphal, is that the Dalai Lama was paying a visit to a large and famous newspaper. He spent the day visiting with the editors and reporters of the newspaper and was shown the huge printing presses churning out the day's edition of the paper. At the end of the day, one of the editors asked him: "Do you have any parting questions.? He replied: "Yes. I have one. Why do you do this?" I call this the "Dalai Lama question" and it represents a question that should be asked more frequently about any project or work that we embark upon.Fast forward to a telephone call that I recently received from a New York Times reporter. We discussed a pathology topic that had appeared in Lab Soft News. Our conversation drifted to a question a... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3362585 Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:07:53 +0100 3362585 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3359237&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F03%2Fblogging-and-the-dalai-lama-question.html One of my favorite stories, probably apocryphal, is that the Dalai Lama was paying a visit to a large and famous newspaper. He spent the day visiting with the editors and reporters of the newspaper and was shown the huge printing presses churning out the day's edition of the paper. At the end of the day, one of the editors asked him: "Do you have any parting questions.? He replied: "Yes. I have one. Why do you do this?" I call this the "Dalai Lama question" and it represents a question that should be asked more frequently about any project or work that we embark upon.Fast forward to a telephone call that I recently received from a New York Times reporter. We discussed a pathology topic that had appeared in Lab Soft News. Our conversation drifted to a question a... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3359237 Fri, 12 Mar 2010 14:07:53 +0100 3359237 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3318681&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F03%2Fdid-google-change-its-search-algorithm-at-the-beginning-of-february.html I have a hunch that Google may have changed its search algorithm in early February in a way that is favorable for Lab Soft News. Here's what I have been seeing on the blog in terms of inbound traffic, which is to say readers who are referred by a Google search or who navigate directly to the site. This is in contrast to the majority of readers who subscribe to the blog or follow it on Twitter and then read the notes via email, with an RSS news consolidator, or in Twitter. Beginning on February 2, 2010, my total inbound traffic has increased by about 70% in a steeply ascending curve. In the more than four years that I have been blogging and for reasons unknown to me, the leading referring search engine has always been Yahoo with Bing a close second lately. Since early February, Google l... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3318681 Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:38:24 +0100 3318681 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3283535&cid=t_100645_90_f&fid=36413&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dcscience.net%2F%3Fp%3D2764 I had never intended to write about climate. It is too far from the things I know about. But recent events have unleashed a Palin-esque torrent of comments from people who clearly know even less about it than I do. In any case, it provides a good context to think about trust in science, Earthrise from moon. (click to enlarge) My interest in it, apart from little matters like the future of the planet, lies in the reputation of science and scientists. I have been going on for years now about the lack of trust in science, and the extent to which it is a self-inflicted problem. The latest reactions to the developments at the University of East Anglia and the IPCC may show the nature of the problem with dreadful clarity, Many of us came into science because, apart from the sheer be... DC's goodscience blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3283535 Thu, 18 Feb 2010 14:09:04 +0100 3283535 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3276101&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F02%2Fthe-microsofting-of-apple.html Some interesting things are happening at Apple. I have refrained from commenting on the IPad launch because I couldn't find an interesting angle that was not already covered in depth. However, a recent article raised a couple of very interesting points and certainly had a provocative theme -- the "Microsofting" of Apple (see: The Microsofting of Apple?; subscription required). Below is an excerpt from it:Don't look now but this may be the year when Apple's market cap does the unthinkable and surpasses Microsoft's. Congratulations will be in order but so will condolences. For a company preoccupied with products is in danger of becoming a company preoccupied with strategy....Take the iPad....It's a blown-up iPod Touch, rolled out not to be insanely great but to ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3276101 Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:19:04 +0100 3276101 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3267218&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F02%2Ffthe-rewiring-of-our-minds-brought-to-you-by-google.html Nick Carr who blogs over at Rough Type unleashed an intellectual storm with his Atlantic Monthly article of July/August 2008 entitled: Is Google Making Us Stupid?. I was a bit player in this drama in that he interviewed me for the article and I was briefly quoted in it. In an offhand way during the interview, I described for him my current inability to read long novels, citing War and Peace as an example. I  also described my new "staccato" and jumpy style of reading books and browsing the web. Both I and Carr attributed my new behavior, in part, to web-browsing and my access to increasingly sophisticated web search capabilities. Now, approximately thirty months later, The Atlantic Monthly ranks behind only Google, Yahoo, and Bing in terms of referring web sites, ranked by ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3267218 Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:55:00 +0100 3267218 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3239843&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2010%2F02%2Flab-soft-news-named-one-of-fifty-top-healthcare-it-blogs.html I recently received an email from James J Atkinson, The Health Sensei, telling me that he has chosen Lab Soft News as one of the top fifty healthcare IT blogs (see: Top 50 Healthcare IT Blogs). The picks are categorized (e.g., CIO and IT Technician Blogs, HIT News & Opinion Blogs, etc.) rather than displayed in rank order. Lab Soft News falls into the second bucket. The recognition is well appreciated but check out the others -- it's a great list. Take some time to savor them and bookmark the page for later reference. (Source: Lab Soft News) Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3239843 Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:05:54 +0100 3239843 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3216776&cid=t_100645_132_f&fid=35006&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnsaunders.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F01%2F28%2Ffrom-the-blogosphere-hardly%2F I generally skip over “From the Blogosphere”, a (mostly) weekly-summary of one or two blog posts in Nature’s “Authors” section (here is the latest). Why? Well, I’ve always suspected that the title is rather misleading. Now, I have the hard numbers to prove it. My feed reader contains an archive of 128 articles, dating back to May 10 2007. I used them to create this CSV file with 3 fields: Date, Blog and Source. The “Blog” field contains the name of the primary blog mentioned in “From the Blogosphere”. On rare occasions where 2 blogs are mentioned, 2 entries were added to the CSV file. I skimmed each article rather quickly, so I may have missed blogs that were mentioned in passing. Next, a short R script: library(ggplot2) # read ... What You're Doing Is Rather Desperate blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3216776 Thu, 28 Jan 2010 02:40:23 +0100 3216776 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3175939&cid=t_100645_109_f&fid=34750&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpsychcentral.com%2Fblog%2Farchives%2F2010%2F01%2F14%2Fthe-false-dichotomy-psychiatry-versus-psychology%2F Ever since grad school, I’ve always bristled at the arbitrary battle lines drawn between the various professions who treat mental disorders. Psychiatrists battle with psychologists, psychologists battle with clinical social workers, and so on. These turf battles do little to help people in need, who only want the best possible care available. But don’t tell that to the evangelists within the respective fields. I actually get embarrassed when I hear psychologists talk in semi-private groups about how they need to get the word about their “superior” abilities to treat mental illness. Research simply hasn’t borne out this attitude. Until it does, I have always looked at the value that each profession brings to the field and respect each for what they bring. So ... World of Psychology blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3175939 Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:33:29 +0100 3175939 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3129693&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F12%2Fwwhat-is-search-neutrality-and-is-the-cure-worse-than-the-disease.html In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Adam Raff raises the topic of search neutrality about which I had not previously heard. He suggests that his company, Foundem, was "disappeared" by Google in web searches for anti-competitive reasons (see: Search, but You May Not Find). Foundem is a vertical search and price comparison web site. When I searched for it on Google in preparation for this note, it appeared at the top of my search engine retrieval page (SERP). Raff may have a point but I am nervous about his proposed solution. Below is an excerpt from the piece:The need for search neutrality is particularly pressing because so much market power lies in the hands of one company: Google....One way that Google exploits this control is by imposing covert “penalties” that can st... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3129693 Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:39:40 +0100 3129693 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3178780&cid=t_100645_90_f&fid=36413&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dcscience.net%2Flondon-news-220307_NEW.wmv This article was meant to celebrate their collective efforts and to celebrate the fact that those efforts are beginning to percolate upwards to influence the powers that be. It seems invidious to pick on one example, but if you want an example of beautiful and trenchant writing on one of the topics dealt with here, you’d be better off reading Andrew Lewis’s piece "Meddling Princes, Medical Regulation and Licenses to Kill” than anything in a print journal. I was a bit disappointed by removal of the comment about the Prince of Wales.  In fact I’m not particularly republican compared with many of my friends.  The royal family is clearly good for the tourist industry and that’s important.  Since Mrs Thatcher (and her successors) destroyed larg... DC's goodscience blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3178780 Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:01:58 +0100 3178780 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3089572&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F12%2Fgoogle-to-market-own-phone-change-wireless-market.html Google has just announced that it will market its own cell phone directly to consumers. This follows the recent successes of its cell phone operating system, Android. This is big news because Google has never before been in the hardware business. There is no way to look at this announcement but as a profound game-changer for the cell phone market. The Wall Street Journal's coverage was the most insightful on this news (see: Google Set To Market Own Phone Next Year). Below is an excerpt from it:The phone, called Nexus One, was designed inside Google and will be sold, at least initially, without being subsidized by a wireless partner, these people said. It is the latest sign of the Internet giant's ever-broadening wireless ambitions as Google hunts for ways to expand its Internet ser... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3089572 Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:09:50 +0100 3089572 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3071487&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F12%2Fred-baloons-darpa-and-social-networking.html For those of you who may have missed the news, DARPA recently sponsored a "balloon-finding" contest to test the capabilities and robustness of web-based social networking sites for information-gathering (see: With Lure of Cash, M.I.T. Group Builds a Balloon-Finding Team to Take Pentagon Prize). The interest of DARPA in intelligence-gathering is self-evident. This is very serious business. Below is an excerpt from the report of the successful conclusion of the project:A group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology edged out about 4,300 other teams on Saturday in a Pentagon-sponsored contest to correctly identify the location of 10 red balloons distributed around the United States. The contest, which featured a $40,000 prize, was organized by the Defense Advanc... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3071487 Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:26:52 +0100 3071487 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3056911&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F12%2Fcan-or-should-news-sites-block-google-from-indexing-their-articles.html As everyone knows by now, the print media are in the midst of a dilemma. Much of the industry is dead or failing financially. The print publishers need to embrace various types of electronic forms of communication and the webisphere. The dilemma is that the business model for electronic media is not lucrative enough to support their current budgets. The standard business model for most bloggers is to devote many hours per week to the task merely for the love of it. It's touch to compete with those who will work for free and enjoy doing it. Nick Carr, who blogs over at RoughType, raises the topic of whether Rupert Murdoch, the print and electronic media czar, intends to charge Google for the privilege of indexing the online content of his various publications (see: Murdoch's wink). ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3056911 Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:16:07 +0100 3056911 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=3017123&cid=t_100645_115_f&fid=34670&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsumerdoc.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F11%2Fsumers-blog-now-on-medscape-radiology.html Thanks to Lakhs of visitors and readers who benefited from this site over last 5 years now, i am now also blogging with Medscape at my blog called as "Radiology 2.0". Before giving the diagnosis on any film look at the image from a distance, take a bird's eye view and then concentrate on the findings. This is what will make a radiologist's interpretation of films superior to other clinical counterparts. From Sumer's Radiology Site http://www.sumerdoc.blogspot.com -The Top Radiology Magazine. Teleradiology Providers at www.teleradproviders.com Mail us at teleradproviders@gmail.com (Source: Sumer's Radiology Site) Sumer's Radiology Site blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=3017123 Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:48:00 +0100 3017123 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2999694&cid=t_100645_122_f&fid=36582&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FSharpBrains%2F%7E3%2FMRDJKneVQC8%2F Welcome to the 16th edition  of Scientia Pro Publica, the blog carnival  that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days. What are some of the fascinating topics you can explore and discuss with this group of bloggers? Science & Us The Evolving Mind: What’s the point of daydreaming? Credit: Johan Stigwall, via Flickr Generally Thinking: What is the brain impact of different types of meditation (focused, open monitoring, compassion)? The Emotion Machine: Can blogging help you control your environment and manage stress? Greater Good Magazine: Want to live longer and bettter? Collective Imagination: Can you share a powerful uncanny experience? Science & Friends via LiveScience Lab Rat: Pros and Cons of havin... SharpBrains blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2999694 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:20:08 +0100 2999694 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2993835&cid=t_100645_115_f&fid=34670&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsumerdoc.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F11%2Fnew-mri-blog-on-block.html Here is the link to another good addition to the Radiology Blogosphere called as MRI BLOG. Throughout this blog, assorted topics, mostly relating to the clinical applications of MRI are covered. You will be directed to other websites for the relevant MRI physics through hyperlinks where appropriate.From Sumer's Radiology Site http://www.sumerdoc.blogspot.com -The Top Radiology Magazine. Teleradiology Providers at www.teleradproviders.com Mail us at teleradproviders@gmail.com (Source: Sumer's Radiology Site) Sumer's Radiology Site blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2993835 Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:41:00 +0100 2993835 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2985049&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F11%2Fthrespiragene-brings-a-not-so-useful-lung-cancer-test-to-market.html We are entering the golden era of diagnostics ushered in by new biomarkers with greater specificity, measured alone and in also in groups called IVDMIAs. For me, the value of any lab test is whether the integrated result provides key diagnostic or therapeutic information that is otherwise unobtainable. A recent story appropriately questioned the value of a new lab test now being marketed for lung cancer (see: Questioning a Test for Cancer). Below is an excerpt from it:Christopher Taylor says he never lasted more than a week when he tried to quit smoking in the past. But it has been four weeks and counting this time, since a genetic test indicated he had a much higher risk of developing lung cancer than the average smoker. Of course, said Mr. Taylor, a 45-year-old salesman who has smoked fo... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2985049 Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:03:23 +0100 2985049 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2977584&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F11%2Ftugeolocation-a-new-approach-from-twitter-to-the-tmi-problem.html I am someone who is constantly grappling with a TMI problem -- Too Much Information. I have cobbled together a patchwork of solutions in response. For example, I have commented in the past about how I select people to follow in Twitter who function as filters and present me with new ideas and information that would be difficult to obtain working on my own (see: Extracting Value from Twitter Messages Using Filters). Recently and in order to cope with my TMI problem, I have begun to use my Palm Pre to quickly scan incoming email during my odd downtime intervals. Email browsing is so easy on this device and it is so readily accessible that I can compress this activity into this previously unused time. When I return to my desktop PC, the remaining email in my inbox has been filtered and thus m... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2977584 Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:14:56 +0100 2977584 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2934963&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F10%2Fare-you-a-primary-care-pathologist.html A new pathology blogger has appeared on the scene -- Dr. Gregory Henderson. He calls himself a primary care pathologist and his first blog note is about this very topic (see: You Might Be A Primary Care Pathologist). Here are the criteria he lists to determine whether one falls into this category: If you have ever taken phone calls from patients to help explain their diagnosis, you might be a primary care pathologist. If you have ever scrubbed into a surgical procedure to help the surgeon identify key areas to sample for frozen section, you might be a primary care pathologist. If you have ever manned a booth at a community health fair that educates women about Pap and HPV testing, you might be a primary care pathologist. If you have spent an enormous time over the past 3 months helping you... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2934963 Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:03:00 +0100 2934963 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2838936&cid=t_100645_101_f&fid=38972&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FLifeUnderTheLights%2F%7E3%2F496r52FKCzs%2Fems-20-bernoulli-fluid-dynamics-and.html (Source: Life Under the lights) Life Under the lights blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2838936 Mon, 28 Sep 2009 01:20:00 +0100 2838936 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2804251&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F09%2Fdecisionaids-for-helping-consumers-make-informed-medical-decisions.html Who is the best person to advise you on important medical decisions? Nearly everyone would respond to this question by citing their family physician. It turns out that this ain't necessarily so according to a recent article (see: Weighty Choices, in Patients’ Hands). Here are some of the details:For patients [with serious diseases], the current health-policy debate comes down to a very personal issue: how to make ever-more-complex decisions when faced with multiple options, each with no clear advantage and with risks and harms that patients may value differently. Preliminary data from the National Survey of Medical Decisions, conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, showed that doctors are more likely to discuss the advantages of treatments while giving short shrift to... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2804251 Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:51:33 +0100 2804251 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2741621&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F08%2Fare-we-turning-into-informavores.html Although the word imformavore was new to me when I ran across it on the web recently, it turns out that I myself have always had these tendencies. Here's a definition of the term:The term informavore ... characterizes an organism that consumes information. It is meant to be a description of human behavior in modern information society, in comparison to omnivore, as a description of humans consuming food. George A. Miller...coined the term in 1983 as an analogy to how organisms survive by consuming negative entropy ...."Just as the body survives by ingesting negative entropy, so the mind survives by ingesting information. In a very general sense, all higher organisms are informavores." (see: Wikepedia)Until the emergence of the web, I have always considered libraries as my sec... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2741621 Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:54:15 +0100 2741621 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2719999&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F08%2Fi-am-currently-in-canberra-australia-where-i-am-participating-in-the.html I am currently in Canberra, Australia, where I am participating in the HIC 2009. This is the annual healthcare informatics conference sponsored by HISA, which is the Health Informatics Society of Australia. Yesterday afternoon, I delivered a 40-minute lecture to the group entitled: Interpreting the Tea Leaves: Ten Trends in Healthcare, Lab Medicine, and Pathology Informatics. It's an expanded version of a previously posted lecture that I presented to the DxMA in Chicago on July 22, 2009.After some introductory explanatory material in the talk, I tease out the ten macro trends that I believe are occurring now in the U.S. with particularly relevance for pathology and lab medicine. Most of them have significant implicatiions for pathology informatics. I consider this "top-ten" a... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2719999 Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:33:27 +0100 2719999 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2645586&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F07%2Fexploring-the-hidden-web-with-webmynd.html The deep or hidden web refers to web content that is not part of the surface web, which is indexed using standard search engines. When researching notes for this blog, I commonly fail to take advantage of videos and images accessible, for example, on YouTube or Flickr. These assets could be instructive but will be missed by my Google searches. I could go directly to the search engines embedded in these sites but this requires additional effort on my part. There is now an easy solution to this problem -- WebMynd.I installed this program as as extension of Mozilla Firefox, which is my web browser. Whenever I launch a search with Google, the upper right-hand portion of the search engine retrieval page (SERP), the normal location for Google sponsored links, is taken over by WebMynd for its own... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2645586 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:07:16 +0100 2645586 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2641368&cid=t_100645_115_f&fid=34670&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsumerdoc.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F07%2Fradiology-20-update.html Webicina.com has come up with extensice collection about web 2.0 resources in radiology. My blog also features in the blogosphere link. Do check out for the best in the world of radiology 2.0 in one location.From Sumer's Radiology Site http://www.sumerdoc.blogspot.com -The Top Radiology Magazine. Teleradiology Providers at www.teleradproviders.com Mail us at teleradproviders@gmail.com (Source: Sumer's Radiology Site) Sumer's Radiology Site blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2641368 Mon, 27 Jul 2009 05:06:00 +0100 2641368 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2634685&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F07%2Ffinally-comes-some-insightful-commentary-on-the-implications-of-chrome-os.html Much has been made of the recent announcement of Google that it is converting its browser, Chrome, to Chrome Operating System. I have tracked this story closely with an eye toward posting a blog note about the topic but none of them made much sense to me until I read the recent commentary by Robert Cringely (see: Chrome vs. Bing vs. You and Me). Below is an excerpt from it:The battle between Microsoft and Google entered a new phase last week with the announcement of Google’s Chrome Operating System — a direct attack on Microsoft Windows....This is all heady stuff and good for lots of press, but in the end none of this is likely to make a real difference for either company or, indeed, for consumers....Microsoft makes most of its money from two products, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft O... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2634685 Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:39:17 +0100 2634685 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2602003&cid=t_100645_90_f&fid=36413&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dcscience.net%2F%3Fp%3D1882 It’s good to see the BMJ joining the campaign for free speech (only a month or two behind the blogs). The suing of Simon Singh for defamation by the British Chiropractic Association has stirred up a hornet’s nest that could (one hopes) change the law of the land, and destroy chiropractic altogether. The BMJ’s editor, Fiona Godlee, has a fine editorial, Keep the libel laws out of science. She starts “I hope all readers of the BMJ are signed up to organised scepticism” and says “Weak science sheltered from criticism by officious laws means bad medicine. Singh is determined to fight the lawsuit rather than apologise for an article he believes to be sound. He and his supporters have in their sights not only the defence of this case but the reform of England&... DC's goodscience blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2602003 Wed, 15 Jul 2009 07:53:13 +0100 2602003 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2593143&cid=t_100645_113_f&fid=34634&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FEmrAndHipaa%2F%7E3%2FqOSjbvAkB40%2F Many people don’t even realize that this website is a blog. The fact is that blogs have become so powerful that you can create an entire website powered by blog software and no one would know the difference. As you can imagine I’m a huge fan of blogs. What readers of this blog don’t realize is that beyond this blog I actually have 3 other major blogs and probably a dozen other minor ones. Blogs have so many benefits that I won’t even begin to list them. However, I still find it amazing that I haven’t spent a penny on marketing this blog (although I did just do my first advertising trade) and yet I’m getting about 5,000 pageviews a day. On some of my other blogs with larger niches I reached over 47,000 pageviews in one day with $0 spent on marketing. It ... EMR and HIPAA blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2593143 Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:32:50 +0100 2593143 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2448204&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F06%2Fassessing-the-cost-of-undiagnosed-disease.html I have posted a number of previous notes about the cost of care for various chronic disease (see: Seeking Solutions to the Chronic Disease Epidemic, Cost Savings Associated with Home-Based Physiologic Monitoring) with a special focus on diabetes (see: The Staggering Cost of Treating Diabetes, Mandatory Pre-employment Lab Testing for Acute or Chronic Disease). Now comes an article discussing the cost of undiagnosed cases of diabetes (see: Costs Are High From Undiagnosed Diabetes). This new idea poses a number of interesting issues and challenges. Below is an excerpt from the article with boldface emphasis mine:Scientists used data from more than 3 million people included in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to estimate costs and numbers of people in the U.S. with undiagno... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2448204 Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:09:54 +0100 2448204 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2442505&cid=t_100645_134_f&fid=34841&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.diabetesmine.com%2F2009%2F05%2Fproud-mama.html I suppose it was just a matter of time. No keeping my gals off the Internet for long: my 10-year-old has started her own blog. You Rock, Lelly!   (Source: Diabetes Mine) Diabetes Mine blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2442505 Sun, 24 May 2009 16:39:50 +0100 2442505 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2399256&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F05%2Ftexting-google-for-various-types-of-information.html It's possible to text short queries to Google to acquire various types of information. A response comes back very quickly. This can be an efficient way to acquire important information when you are on the run such as whether a particular airplane flight is on-time or the weather in a city to which you are traveling.Text your search query to 466453 ('GOOGLE' on most devices) and Google will send back your results. The sample queries below are self-explanatory. As one example, a "DTW airport" message corresponding to the airport code for the Detroit will elicit a reply with the weather at the airport and delay times, if any. A list of airline abbreviations can be found here. Below are a set of sample queries that you may find useful: sushi 48105 weather ann arbor define... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2399256 Thu, 07 May 2009 14:46:34 +0100 2399256 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2390465&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F05%2Fhorizontal-scrollng-and-medical-content-on-the-web.html I have the impression that a major technical shift is underway regarding how web pages are organized and formatted. I picked up this idea from a story published in the New York Times (see: Upstart Gossip Site Makes a Big Splash). Here's the passage that caught my eye:The breezy site [Wonderwall.com], which scrolls horizontally to emulate the feeling of flipping through a tabloid in the checkout lane, logged 6.4 million unique visitors during March, making it the fourth-ranked celebrity site, according to comScore.In a previous note, I discussed my current habit of reading the news on the web over my morning cup of coffee using my ultra-light nettop computer (see: Browsing My Morning (Electronic) Newspaper over Coffee). In this same note, I also made reference to the new display format ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2390465 Wed, 06 May 2009 13:52:09 +0100 2390465 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2387248&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F05%2Feffectiveness-of-direct-to-consumer-drug-advertisements.html Although I am generally enthusiastic about providing more health information to consumers, I must confess that I have serious reservations about direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug advertisements on TV. Part of my concern is that pharmaceutical companies and their advertising agencies know how to tune these spots to manipulate less sophisticated viewers. As a prime example of their skills, one of the fastest selling categories these days in retail drug stores these days are the "as seen on TV" items, much of which are often junk. I was thus drawn to a recent article on the web discussing a survey of the effect of DTC drug advertising. Below is an excerpt from it (see: Doctor Visits and Direct to Consumer Rx Advertising) with boldface emphasis mine:Direct to Consumer (DTC) advertising f... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2387248 Mon, 04 May 2009 15:34:11 +0100 2387248 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2375786&cid=t_100645_86_f&fid=38272&url=http%3A%2F%2Flaikaspoetnik.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F04%2F26%2Fblue-ribbon-blog-rally-for-free-speech-online-een-blauw-lint-voor-vrijheid-van-meningsuiting%2F I have never been a person who would stoop to self-censoring and I never will be. I’d rather not write at all if I have to stop being frank and honest in my words. -Omid-Reza Mir-Sayafi Thanks to T at Notes of an Anesthesioboist for getting this going, a group of bloggers is holding a blog [...] (Source: Laika's MedLibLog) Laika's MedLibLog blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2375786 Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:49:00 +0100 2375786 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2349060&cid=t_100645_122_f&fid=37835&url=http%3A%2F%2Fintelligencetesting.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F04%2Frandom-tidbits-from-mind-blogosphere-4.html Thanks to Mind Hacks for tip regarding article in Nature re: the science of MRI neuroimaging.Check out Derick Bounds Mind Blog for recent research on importance of sleeping and learning and memory.Technorati Tags: psychology, educational psychology, school psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, neurotechnology, MRI, sleep, memory, learning (Source: Intelligent Insights on Intelligence Theories and Tests (aka IQ's Corner)) Intelligent Insights on Intelligence Theories and Tests (aka IQ's Corner) blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2349060 Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:06:00 +0100 2349060 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2342002&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F04%2Fpreventive-and-predictive-medicine-as-part-of-the-healthcare-continuum.html In a recent note, I began to explore the medical disciplines of preventive and predictive medicine and, briefly, the role of clinical lab testing within them (see: The Relationship Between Predictive and Preventive Medicine). Dr. Brian Jackson of ARUP Labs posted a very perceptive comment after reading the post and I copy it below in its entirety:When most people think about preventive care, they picture "healthy" individuals. But the benefits of preventive care, including screening and other "wellness" tests, are much higher in individuals who are at high risk. This particularly includes those with chronic diseases. e.g. LDL monitoring is much more important in a diabetic than in someone with no risk factors for CAD. This suggests an even stronger relationship between... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2342002 Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:00:00 +0100 2342002 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2342004&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F04%2Fdisease-mongering-medicalization-by-big-pharma.html The etymology for the word monger is quite interesting -- it was not originally used in a pejorative sense, as it is today, but referred neutrally to a trader or middleman. Mongering today is used to refer to an activity such as the peddling of cheap or illicit goods. A recent article discussed the medicalization of newly recognized and previously untreated problems and referred to the process as disease mongering (see: Disease Mongering or Medicalization). Below is an excerpt from it with boldface emphasis mine:The overlap between business ethics and medical ethics represent a moral minefield. Nowhere more so than in the domain of newly recognised and previously untreated disorders, syndromes and diseases, among them social anxiety disorder, non-physiological erectile dysfunction, aging, ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2342004 Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:25:20 +0100 2342004 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2302481&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F04%2Ftwitter-and-the-numbers-game-social-media-gone-astray.html I have come to the somewhat belated conclusion that each individual using Twitter may be operating with different goals in mind. This is in contrast to, say, Google where most people are using it in a roughly similar fashion, allowing for differences in the way that searches are conducted. As I have commented in previous notes (see: Extracting Value from Twitter Messages Using Filters, Micro-blogging, Twitter, and Social Networking), I use Twitter as a very efficient means for new knowledge discovery. I uncover many of the leads for the notes published in Lab Soft News on Twitter by following individuals who point me in new directions in lab medicine and new aspects of healthcare delivery with their short notes.So, what different goals are other Twitter users pursing? Well, for one, they m... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2302481 Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:08:48 +0100 2302481 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2308753&cid=t_100645_93_f&fid=35707&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FHemodynamics%2F%7E3%2FoxMHnLAKvoo%2Fdont-walk-sit.html Above: employees of an Indiana health plan promote "breast cancer awareness" by wearing pink and making themselves into a ribbon. Below: from Rex Wockner at wockner.blogspot.com; the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power in Chicago. AIDS activists demanded national healthcare, but mostly didn't figure out how to make common cause with other people with other illnesses. Over at DuncanCross.net, a blog I've just started reading, the pseudonymous Mr. Cross urges us to consider not walking. Not going on breast cancer walks, Crohn's disease walks, polycystic kidney disease walks, etc, etc. Don't walk, he says:To me, as a sick person, one of the worst aspects of these organizations is their aggressive insistence that the best way to help sick people is by funding for-cure research. That is a lie. Sick... hemodynamics blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2308753 Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:02:00 +0100 2308753 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2271664&cid=t_100645_107_f&fid=35762&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2Fscienceblogs%2Fgrrlscientist%2F%7E3%2F7zJY0VSpr5s%2Fwelcome_scienceblogs_brasil.php Image: (Royalty-Free) Corbis. ScienceBlogs' newest member, ScienceBlogs Brasil, was just launched with 23 Brasilian science blogs, many award-winning. These science blogs are published in either Portuguese, the official language of Brasil, or English, and frequently, in both languages. So if you speak Portuguese or if you are Brazilian, please do add this site to your list of bookmarks. I am sure you will discover some science blogs there that you will love as much as those you've already been following for years. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... (Source: Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)) Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2271664 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:25:05 +0100 2271664 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2261625&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F03%2Fwill-twitter-provide-you-with-your-next-local-newspaper.html In a previous note, I discussed how journalists could mine Twitter for story leads (see: How Journalists Can Use Twitter to Develop Story Leads). Connect, if you will, this thought to another recent story in a German media outlet in which Evan Williams, Twitter CEO, drops the hint that the company has an interest in providing enhanced coverage of local news (see: Twitter to Start Serving Local News to Users). Below is an excerpt from that story with boldface emphasis mine:But Williams did share something worth noting at the end of the interview. When asked about possible future features for Twitter, he reportedly said that one of the things being considered is an extension that lets people know what’s happening in their immediate vicinity. That would basically mean that Twitter could act... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2261625 Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:51:47 +0100 2261625 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2261635&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F03%2Fhow-medical-journalists-can-use-twitter.html I have posted previous notes about how newspapers and journalists need to adapt to the blogosphere and to social media (see, for example: Mainstream Media Begin to Adopt Link Journalism). I myself am a relatively recent convert to microblogging and Twitter. A recent article on the web provides advice about how journalists can use the social media to develop story leads and improve their job performance (see: How Journalists Can Use Social Media To Monitor Their Beats Or Communities). Below is an excerpt from it focusing specifically on Twitter with boldface emphasis mine:1. Twitter: Journalists have a hard time getting their heads wrapped around Twitter, as do many users when first confronted with the service. But if you think of Twitter for what it is — a big room full of people having ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2261635 Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:56:50 +0100 2261635 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2249865&cid=t_100645_105_f&fid=36987&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FIvorKovicMd%2F%7E3%2F74m-b1daVn8%2F Recently I gave two interviews regarding my scientific research of medical blogs and the Health Blogs Observatory. The first one was conducted by Ed Silverman, a prize-winning journalist who used to maintain the extremely popular Pharmalot blog. He now contributes to the Association of Health Care Journalists blog, where the actual interview was published. The second one was conduced by Norina Wendy Di Blasio, a member of the editorial staff of Il Pensiero Scientifico Editore, an Italian publisher established in 1946.Among books and journals, this Company publishes a weekly newsletter sent to 11 thousands Italian doctors. Currently they are publishing a series of interviews on Health 2.0. My interview was eventually published in both Italian and English. Hope you will read the interviews a... Ivor Kovic, M.D. blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2249865 Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:38:29 +0100 2249865 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2241019&cid=t_100645_107_f&fid=35762&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2Fscienceblogs%2Fgrrlscientist%2F%7E3%2FY4JGH7JxqsA%2Fopenlab2008_its_now_available.php tags: OpenLab2008, Open Laboratory 2008, science writing, blog writing, books Great news: as of today, Open Lab 2008 is now available for you to read and enjoy! My regular readers are aware that once again, one of my pieces was accepted in this year's OpenLab -- quite an honor since there are only three other people whose essays have managed to be included in all three volumes of OpenLab! Even more astonishing, only 50 essays, one poem and one cartoon were chosen from the more than 830 submissions to OpenLab2008. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... (Source: Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)) Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2241019 Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:53:59 +0100 2241019 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2232435&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F03%2Fmost-popular-cameras-in-the-flickr-community.html Here's what I consider to be a fascinating statistic: iPhone is now ranked as the fifth most popular camera in the Flickr community (see: Most Popular Cameras in the Flickr Community). For readers who have never heard of it. Flickr is the preeminent photo-storing and sharing web site and passed the three billion mark for stored images last November. In this survey and preceding iPhone in the ranking were three Canon digital cameras and one Nikon model. So what are we to make of these data regarding "camera" preferences? Below are some of my initial observations: As with many examples of emerging information technology, camera functionality was initially integrated into cell phones in order to appeal to buyers and because it did not add excessively to the product price point. ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2232435 Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:13:17 +0100 2232435 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2227125&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F02%2Fbackchannel-tweeting-in-medical-lectures-revisiting-audience-attention.html In a recent note (see: Back-Channel Tweeting at Medical Conferences), I raised the topic of back-channel tweeting at medical conferences as a means to solicit more comments and questions from audience members. I received two comments from readers about this topic. Mark Pool who blogs over at Daily Sign-Out submitted the following thought: I wonder if medical student, resident lectures wouldn't be more interactive using this. For example, giving them an in-line quiz after 5-10 minutes of content (and making the cumulative score count for their grade). Mike Lougee also contributed a comment: Good ideas, here are two more questions: (1) Twittering would be enhanced if every presentation included a "moderator" who could monitor the [Tweets] in real-time, which the speaker cannot... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2227125 Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:42:30 +0100 2227125 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2216484&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F02%2Fbackchannel-tweeting-at-a-conference.html The number of new uses for microblogging that continue to surface is a pleasant surprise. For today's note, I will focus on what is being referred to as back-channel tweeting at conferences. One of my main challenges of managing such conferences is to make them more interactive by stimulating input from the attendees. Part of this problem is that many of them don't want to approach the microphones and ask questions during the Q and A sessions. Now comes Twitter to help solve this problem (see: How to Present While People are Twittering). Below is an excerpt from the article with boldface emphasis mine with emphasis on how speakers need to psychologically adjust to having audiences members tweeting during a lecture:People used to whisper to each other or pass hand-scribbled notes du... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2216484 Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:58:00 +0100 2216484 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2210296&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F02%2Fsome-hints-on-search-engine-optimization-and-the-google-crawlers.html In a previous note, I raised the topic of Google juice (see: Snap Google Quiz on a Tuesday Morning), which is a term for describing influence with the Google crawler. It can be assessed by the ranking of you or your blog on the Google search engine retrieval page (SERP). The topic of personal search engine optimization arose in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal by a reporter named Julia Angwin (see: It's a New Me (As Seen on Google). Below is an excerpt from it with boldface emphasis mine:For years, I winced at what popped up when I Googled my name. The top result of a search on "Julia Angwin" was an article I wrote for The Wall Street Journal in 2005 after I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was indicted for leaking the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame....I hated... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2210296 Tue, 24 Feb 2009 14:18:56 +0100 2210296 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2414828&cid=t_100645_97_f&fid=36415&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dcscience.net%2F%3Fp%3D1191 BSc courses in homeopathy are closing. Is it a victory for campaigners, or just the end of the Blair/Bush era? The Guardian carries a nice article by Anthea Lipsett, The Opposite of Science (or download pdf of print version). Dr Peter Davies, dean of Westminster’s school of integrated health, says “he welcomes the debate but it isn’t as open as he would like.” Well you can say that again. The University of Westminster has refused to send me anything much, and has used flimsy excuses to avoid complying with the Freedom of Information Act. Nevertheless a great deal has leaked out. Not just amethysts emit hig Yin energy, but a whole lot more (watch this space). Given what is already in the public, arena, how can they possibly say things like this? “Those t... DC's Improbable Science blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2414828 Tue, 24 Feb 2009 09:27:51 +0100 2414828 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2177464&cid=t_100645_87_f&fid=34595&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnhsblogdoc.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F02%2Fwhat-happened-to-smallpox-and-apology.html Smallpox is an acute contagious disease caused by variola virus, a member of the orthopoxvirus family. Smallpox, which is believed to have originated over 3,000 years ago in India or Egypt, is one of the most devastating diseases known to humanity. For centuries, repeated epidemics swept across continents, decimating populations and changing the course of history. In some ancient cultures, smallpox was such a major killer of infants that custom forbade the naming of a newborn until the infant had caught the disease and proved it would survive.Smallpox killed Queen Mary II of England, Emperor Joseph I of Austria, King Luis I of Spain, Tsar Peter II of Russia, Queen Ulrika Elenora of Sweden, and King Louis XV of France.The disease, for which no effective treatment was ever developed, killed ... NHS Blog Doctor blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2177464 Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:45:00 +0100 2177464 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2149646&cid=t_100645_107_f&fid=35762&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2Fscienceblogs%2Fgrrlscientist%2F%7E3%2FveWmka1-IZ0%2Fmany_thanks_for_the_birdday_wi.php I just want to thank everyone again -- my readers, PZ (whom I think of as family) and his readers, and my fellow SciBlings -- for popping in to wish me a happy birthday. Your kindness has served to cheer me up since I have been having a rough time of it recently; so rough that it has been a battle just to get out of bed (one of the many perils of bipolar disorder). I am still feeling incredibly sad for reasons that completely elude me (I do have wacky brain chemistry afterall) but peeking in at my blog today and reading your comments and email (from all over the world!) has been like unwrapping dozens and dozens of gifts. You guys are the bestest ever. You make me feel so lucky: moochas smoochas to you all. Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... (Source: Living... Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2149646 Sun, 01 Feb 2009 03:39:59 +0100 2149646 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2149648&cid=t_100645_107_f&fid=35762&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2Fscienceblogs%2Fgrrlscientist%2F%7E3%2FVyM7dWkCvR0%2Fcircus_of_the_spineless_is_ali.php I have been making a lot of noise about science-y blog carnivals that were experiencing extinction events, but through our efforts, my wonderful colleague and friend, Kevin Zelnio, has stepped in to manage the Circus of the Spineless! So let's help Kevin by offering to host this blog carnival and by sending in our blog entries of "the other 95%" of earth's species: those without backbones! (Keep in mind that I am talking about species without backbones, not individual politicians, so please adjust your submissions accordingly). Read the comments on this post... (Source: Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)) Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2149648 Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:36:47 +0100 2149648 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2147520&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F01%2Fwhat-would-google-do-to-survive-in-todays-market.html It will come as no surprise that I am a fan of the web and all of the blogging tools and social networks that It has spawned. Google is a big part of this world -- the company helped to create many of the tools that I use on a daily basis. Jeff Jarvis was one of the early and most successful bloggers and he has now written a book entitled What Would Google Do?. In his blog, Buzz Machine, he recently provided his analysis of what Google does, and will continue to do, to survive in this new age (see: What Would Google Do? on sale today). Here is a list of these Google rules as understood by Jarvis: Customers are now in charge. They can be heard around the globe and have an impact on huge institutions in an instant. People can find each other anywhere and coalesce around you—or against you.... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2147520 Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:37:05 +0100 2147520 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2137627&cid=t_100645_107_f&fid=35762&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2Fscienceblogs%2Fgrrlscientist%2F%7E3%2F9fKs1KgO3Gk%2Fthe_blog_carnival_death_knell.php Okay, what's happening here, you guys? It seems that yet another blog carnival, Oekologie, has gone the way of the passenger pigeon. And I even volunteered to host this blog carnival by leaving a message on the site, but my message was discarded. I am happy to help rescue science-y blog carnivals, but I need some help, and some of that help can come in the form of (1) ASKING me and others to host the carnival when the host list has diminished to less than three future hosts, (2) not ignoring people who are actually coming out of their basement lairs to volunteer to host a particular carnival and (3) making sure that we all have the necessary information to do a good job (submission list or access to the carnival's email account; the carnival's "mission statement" or "statement of purpose" ... Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2137627 Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:34:49 +0100 2137627 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2131274&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F01%2Ftwo-new-pathology-blogs-launched.html Keith Kaplan, who posts over at at the Digital Pathology Blog, calls our attention to two new pathology blogs about which I was unaware (see: Another pathologist joins the blogosphere). They are the following: The Daily Sign-Out and Neuropathology Blog. The author of the former is generous enough to credit me in his first note with being part of the inspiration for launching his blog (see: Propositum). Both of these new blog offerings are great. Take a look at them! (Source: Lab Soft News) Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2131274 Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:26:22 +0100 2131274 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2129419&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fwhat-things-do-you-miss-most-that-ms-has-taken-from-you%2F We can all agree that multiple sclerosis is a thief.  It takes things away from us upon which we rely and from which we derive much.  Of all the things that MS has taken from me; a career, a marriage (MS was only part of that), a lifestyle, a persona, you know what I miss most? A hot tub. Far greater a number are affected by heat than cold (though I know we’ve had those conversations as well) so I suspect I’m not alone here. On cold winter evenings or when a muscle is just out of place, a romantic getaway or just when it would be nice to relax at the gym, I miss a hot tub. The weekend after I was diagnosed in 2001, my former wife made reservation at a local spa hotel for us to recoup.  I had great treatments like hot stone massage, a hot seaweed bath, I spent lots of time in... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2129419 Fri, 23 Jan 2009 22:25:43 +0100 2129419 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2122060&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fmultiple-sclerosis-requires-routine%2F We’ve been nothing here at Life with MS if not totally and unabashedly up front, open and even personal.  In that vein, I’m going to get even more personal with you than I ever have been before; today I’ll talk about hygiene. I’ve come to realize that in certain things in my day, things that most people just don’t even think about doing, that my auto-pilot is broken.  You know the type of things I’m talking about; how many of us think about how we are brushing our teeth, for example? I’ve found over the past years that if I don’t do everything in an exact order in the morning, I just forget to do it. We’re used to our minds being on the day ahead when showering, for instance.  Now, however, if I let my mind wander to my day ahead, I ... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2122060 Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:24:28 +0100 2122060 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2121515&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F01%2Fa-blueprint-for-saving-our-hometown-newspapers.html I am an enthusiast about all newspapers, both those with a national reputation such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal as well as my local paper -- the Ann Arbor News. The latter is, unfortunately, beginning to circle the drain like many others of its kind. I have read the comments by journalists and other experts about how to save our hometown newspapers. Many of these critiques have stuck me as inadequate, irrelevant, or self-serving. That was the case until I read a blog note by Dana Blankenhorn entitled: Ending the Paper. Here is an excerpt from his note with boldface emphasis mine:The newspapers decided long ago that they would only organize their own advertisers and their own readers, thank you, that the rest of the market was too much work for them. So they slowly cir... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2121515 Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:39:26 +0100 2121515 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2121516&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F01%2Fextracting-value-from-twitter-using-filters.html As a relatively recent convert to Twitter, a microblogging service, I have become more acutely aware of the need for filters to increase the value of social networks sites. Twitter is a microblogging service allowing users to post messages of no more than 140 characters called Tweets. I have made one brief reference in a note to Twitter (see: Physician Bloggers and Communication with Healthcare Consumers). Part of my thinking about information filters has been derived from a video lecture by Clay Shirky on YouTube (see: It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure.). I have posted a number of previous notes about Shirkey's ideas. The optimal way to utilize Twitter is to only read the messages of other users that you have selected. Every Twitter user follows the mess... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2121516 Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:08:27 +0100 2121516 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2121620&cid=t_100645_87_f&fid=34872&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.healthbolt.net%2F2009%2F01%2F20%2Fsharpen-the-brain-with-this-list-of-top-brain-fitness-and-cognitive-health-books%2F If you’re looking for a little light reading, then this list won’t do. This list is for those of us who are looking to learn more about the brain and brain fitness. Originally posted at Sharp Brains, the 10 Most Popular Brain Fitness & Cognitive Health Books list made it’s way to the Huffington Post, adding another book along the way. If you want to find out why these 10 11 are the chosen ones, head over to either of those two sites. I’m just posting the covers of the books so that when you see them at your favorite book store, you’ll know that they’re the ones you are looking for. Happy reading… Tags: books, brain, brain books, brain exercises, brain fitness, cognitive training, reading lists, sharp brainShare This (Source: Healthbolt) Healthbolt blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2121620 Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:03:00 +0100 2121620 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2112221&cid=t_100645_107_f&fid=35762&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2Fscienceblogs%2Fgrrlscientist%2F%7E3%2FbNEXcNk_rMU%2Fwhat_happened_to_tangled_bank.php I am sitting here in North Carolina in a blog session about blog carnivals, and I am dismayed to ask you what has happened to these three blog carnivals: Tangled Bank, The Boneyard, and The Circus of the Spineless? Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... (Source: Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)) Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2112221 Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:20:47 +0100 2112221 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2112485&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fms-and-clinical-trials-a-call-for-questions%2F I am preparing for a multiple sclerosis webcast that will happen in early February.  The topic for this conversation will be phase III clinical trials and I’ll have guests from around the country join us to talk about many aspects of this subject. As always, I want to make sure that “real” questions and concerns are addressed during the webcast and I’d like to know your questions about clinical trials. What would you like to know?  Let me put that another way: If you were sitting in a room with two well renowned MS researchers and a person living with MS who has been in a phase III clinical trial, what would you ask them? Some of my questions are: How do you get into a trial?  What are the risks?  Do I have to stop using my current drugs? What would you ask? Thi... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2112485 Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:17:44 +0100 2112485 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2107983&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fms-recipe-for-success-i-need-your-help%2F For nearly two years now, in response to your requests, I have taken one post every month to share a healthful cooking tip and, perhaps, a recipe.  We’ve talked about foods that are good for us.  We’ve shared recipes new and old.  We’ve even dredged up an ancient food for you to try.  All of this in an effort to keep us well as we try to get on with this life with multiple sclerosis. I’m the Chef, so many of you looked to me to lead the discussion and offer ideas.  I have no problem with that.  I now need your help. As you’ll recall from my New Year’s resolution post, I’ve got to lose some weight.  I haven’t been able to exercise properly for almost two years with that old dying hip so I’ve got a little extra around the middle (a... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2107983 Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:24:25 +0100 2107983 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2095171&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fms-treatment-and-hair-loss%2F Has multiple sclerosis got you pulling out your hair…in clumps? Over the past month or so, I’ve noted several comments, mostly from folks on Tysabri, about hair loss. As a person not yet on this drug therapy (but considering it, intently) I want to know more; and I’m sure our other readers do as well. Novantrone, a chemotherapy drug used on some forms of cancer as well as MS, has a listed side effect of minor hair loss. When on a regular dosing schedule (every 3 months) I found a few more of my ever-graying tresses in the shower drain but not so much to be alarmed. Besides, as I said, some shedding was expected. These anecdotal reports of unexpected follicular abandonment while on an MS drug are of concern to me. Not for the reasons of vanity. While I feel lucky to have a... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2095171 Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:23:07 +0100 2095171 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2089894&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F01%2Fphysician-bloggers-effective-communication-with-healthcare-consumers.html Through my recent participation in Twitter (more about microblogging and Lab Soft News in a later note), I have been electronically introduced to Dr. Minas Chrysopoulo whose username in Twitter is mchrysopoulo. If you sign up as one of his followers on Twitter, you can read his periodic 140-character-long Tweets relating to breast cancer and surgical reconstruction. He also blogs about reconstructive surgery at Breast Cancer Reconstruction Blog. Note the developing link between blogging and microblogging.As I have commented in previous notes, professional blogging is a component of the total blogosphere (see: Professional Blogs as Meta Information Resources). I define professional bloggers as those individuals who write notes within their professional sphere and expertise as opposed to tho... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2089894 Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:16:30 +0100 2089894 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2090244&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fhappy-new-year-hows-your-ms-today%2F A Happy 2009, everyone! I know an awful lot of folks who were happy to see 2008 fade away and look forward (with justified trepidation) to a fresh start. Each month, we take the first Wednesday’s post to catch up with one another about our life with multiple sclerosis. We’ve used the space to tell of symptoms, relapses, triumphs and setbacks. We share coping skills, and we lament our losses. It’s also a chance, I find, to regularly check in with myself. As we all know, MS can slip ever so slowly into our daily routine. If I didn’t take time each month for this posting, I know I would have missed some things until much further into the symptom. What I’d like for all of us to do this first Wednesday of ‘09 is to think back, not only over the past months bu... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2090244 Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:42:30 +0100 2090244 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2086838&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2009%2F01%2Fintroducing-cloud-as-a-service-integrated-with-pc-applications.html I keep thinking that, at some point, I will cease to be astonished as new information technology products become available. However, this has not happened for me in more than two decades. Nick Carr, a very astute observer of the IT scene who blogs over at Rough Type, has described a new phenomenon that he calls cloud as a feature  (see: Cloud as a feature). I have blogged about cloud computing in previous notes if you want some background information about this topic. Simply put, the "cloud" is a global network of computers that can be accessed via the web and that can be "rented" for large-scale computer processing applications or major data storage. Below is an excerpt from Nick's 's note with boldface emphasis mine:Microsoft has been touting its "s... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2086838 Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:07:35 +0100 2086838 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2073847&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F12%2Fgoogle-abandons-concept-of-net-neutrality.html For the uninitiated, net neutrality refers to the idea that content providers on the web should not be allowed to pay the cable and phone carrier companies, pipe providers, for an Internet fast lane to deliver information to customers. Google is one of the most prominent and successful content providers, delivering its search-engine results to users and, in the process, its revenue-generating advertisements. Google has been a strong advocate for net neutrality in the past but now seems to be cutting deals with the carriers for preferential fast-lane access. Below is an excerpt from the story from the Wall Street Journal (see: Google Wants Its Own Fast Track on the Web) with boldface emphasis mine:Google...has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a pro... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2073847 Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:42:34 +0100 2073847 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2075157&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fan-old-tradition-reminds-us-that-it-could-be-worse%2F In countries of Gaelic history, especially in Ireland and even more especially in the south of County Kerry, a pre-Christian tradition took place last week, which is not only charming but charitable to an exceptional degree. It’s called The Wren’s Day. I was fortunate to be invited (or more correctly, allowed) to join in the revelry of the day in tiny Dingle Town a couple of years back while living in the county. A sweet lass from the town who was writing her doctoral dissertation on the tradition befriended me in a pub one eve and bid me to join her “wren”. The wren, a notoriously treacherous bird of lore, was once hunted and nailed to a pike which would lead a procession (the wren was not only to have betrayed St. Stephen but also old Irish soldiers in their fight... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2075157 Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:48:30 +0100 2075157 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2067782&cid=t_100645_85_f&fid=36194&url=http%3A%2F%2Ftesstermulo.com%2F2008%2F12%2F27%2Fhe-who-had-too-much-sense-of-entitlement%2F Only a person with such impunity can say these words: ”Hindi nila kami kilala! Sabihin mo nga sa kanila kung sino ako!” And, as for emphasis and show of power, he beat up a 56-year old man and a 14-year old boy…in an effing golf course because of an effing golf game.  And that guy who felt he’s entitled to too many things he doesn’t deserve is a politician, Mayor Nasser Pangandaman Jr. of Masiu, Lanao del Sur. Bambee, in her blog, Vicissitude, tells us the tale of how this Masiu mayor and his company (including his father, the Secretary Nasser Pangandaman of Department of Agrarian Reform) bullied and mauled her father and her brother: “My brother and I were playing golf at the South Course of Valley. We were on the 3rd hole, and we see two golf carts g... Prudence and Madness blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2067782 Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:40:30 +0100 2067782 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2065345&cid=t_100645_107_f&fid=35762&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Er%2Fscienceblogs%2Fgrrlscientist%2F%7E3%2F493278228%2Faccording_to_google_another_we.php Image: TouchGraph and Google [larger view]. Thanks to a reader, sparc, I have reconstructed another web phylogeny of this blog for you to look at. If you actually go to the site itself and look at the graphics as well as the left sidebar, you'll find all sorts of interesting things pop up, thanks to Java. So what does your blog phylogeny look like using this search-and-graph paradigm? Read the comments on this post... (Source: Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)) Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2065345 Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:31:43 +0100 2065345 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2061701&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fsnowstorms-and-our-multiple-sclerosis-teach-us-a-valuable-lesson%2F I was a Boy Scout (be prepared). I spent several years in the U.S. Coast Guard (Semper Paratus: Always Ready). I now live with a disease that can, and oft does, change from day to day (multiple sclerosis). Might as well use what you have… We’ve had the most snow (that has stuck around for over five days now, and there is over a foot of white in my gardens) than I can ever remember here in Seattle. No big deal; I was ready for it…or at least able to adapt a little better than some of my neighbors. Every morning, we’ve been up early, sweeping, shoveling, clearing and salting our walkways and paths for the dogs. We’ve plenty of fresh food on hand, and the cars were winter tuned and fueled before the storm ever hit. I will admit, however, to delay in the mounting ... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2061701 Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:04:47 +0100 2061701 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2055783&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F12%2Flab-soft-news-turns-three.html Happy Birthday, Lab Soft News. You turn three years old today. The very first blog note was posted on December 21, 2006 (see: Reinventing Pathology: The Autopsy). Interestingly enough, this same theme of "reinventing pathology" has been a persistent one during the course of the last three years.This will be a brief "state of the blog" note just to bring readers up-to-date. A blog rises and falls and the basis of the interest and enthusiasm of its readers and, on that score, one could conclude that  that the patient is healthy: A total of 1,036 notes have been posted on Lab Soft News during the three years and these have stimulated a total of 349 comments. I have come to the conclusion that a blog such as this one is usually not very controversial and thus does not... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2055783 Sun, 21 Dec 2008 14:15:48 +0100 2055783 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2053366&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fsolitude-a-side-effect-of-ms%2F There are physical and chemical reasons a person with multiple sclerosis should be ever vigilant for symptoms of depression. Our disease itself can cause imbalance in the central nervous system (CNS) which is known to bring on symptoms of clinical depression. Additionally, for those taking many of the disease-modifying therapies, drug-induced depression is listed as potential side effect on several MS medications. We, and those in our most intimate circles, must observe and be aware of this ever-present reality. There’s something else about MS which can and does open the door to depression: solitude. By definition, solitude is a state of being solitary (alone). I propose that it isn’t just aloneness, which can be a smoldering punk. Limited or reduced social activity can also le... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2053366 Fri, 19 Dec 2008 18:52:16 +0100 2053366 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2052590&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F12%2Fthe-term-cloud-as-used-in-web-computing-takes-another-turn.html I have traced the use of the term cloud as it relates to web-enabled computing in multiple previous notes. Briefly stated, cloud compputing has evolved from a computer architecture consisting of multiple synchronized servers to a broader definition describing a set of Internet services and software accessible with a browser. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal take the term even further afield and defines it in the context of web marketing as an affinity group enabled by, and aggregated, by web sites and services (see: Marketing in the World of the Web). Below is an excerpt from the article with boldface emphasis mine:From crowds to clouds: Once you get that attention -- once you generate heavy traffic to your site, gather a large league of "friends" on MySpace, or spawn ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2052590 Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:48:57 +0100 2052590 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2047804&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fwhat-would-you-do-for-a-cure-for-ms%2F Allow me to first apologize for my spotty postings as of late. Caryn and I have been fighting a particularly virulent strain of rhinovirus this past couple of weeks, and it had us pretty far down. I’ve reached bottom and think I’m better today than yesterday; it’s a start. During all this coughing, hacking and sneezing, I’ve still been doing my physical therapy rehab: leg lifts, squatting exercises, all the fun stuff. It got me to thinking about how much effort I’m putting in after the fact of hip replacement. The docs have done everything they can; now it’s my turn. Anything I get back from here on out is all up to me. What about my multiple sclerosis? I know that many of us (and I’m one, don’t think I’m pointing fingers) don’t ... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2047804 Wed, 17 Dec 2008 20:32:20 +0100 2047804 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2039849&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F12%2Fcontinuing-differentiation-of-the-radiology-network-ecosystems.html Ole Eichhorn has performed a very valuable service in his Daily Scan blog by publishing a long set of perceptive observations about the RSNA (Radiological Society of North America) conference in Chicago (Visiting RSNA). RSNA is one of the largest conferences in the world and attracts about 60,000 registrants annually. His blog note is a gem and I will return to it again because of the many valuable insights it contains. Below is only one of them -- short but powerful. There were a number of “Nighthawk-like” companies, providing outsourced Radiology reading services. Either at night, or offshore, or with some kind of subspecialty. With Radiology being digital, it is clear that Radiology reading can be done remotely, and a whole ecosystem is forming around this. You can imagine the same ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2039849 Tue, 16 Dec 2008 13:16:53 +0100 2039849 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2039850&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F12%2Fteaching-lab-medicine-to-medical-students-and-residents-finally-a-solution.html Discussion forums for medical students and residents across course web sites can also bring student and resident ideas to bear on the material that is being taught. (Source: Lab Soft News) Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2039850 Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:37:00 +0100 2039850 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2033010&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F12%2Fgoogle-advanced-search.html Because I seek both inspiration and content for Lab Soft News only on the web, I have been forced to become a bit of a web search connoisseur with my favorite search engine being Google. I was therefore interested to learn that Google Search now includes selected magazines (see: Google updates search index with old magazines). Below is an excerpt from the story with boldface emphasis mine:Google has added a magazine rack to its Internet search engine. As part of its quest to corral more content published on paper, Google... has made digital copies of more than 1 million articles from magazines that hit the newsstands decades ago. For now, the old magazine articles can be found only through Google's search service for finding digital copies of books. But the Mountain View, Calif.-based ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2033010 Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:56:05 +0100 2033010 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2018242&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fdrop-everything-i-have-multiple-sclerosis%2F As we all wind down from the Thanksgiving holiday (it’s my all-time favorite and I “do it up” so it takes a while to wind down), I’ve been noticing an unsettling bit of new multiple sclerosis in my life. I’m dropping everything! In one day early this week, I dropped a sauté pan half-full of hot food, three glasses (breaking only one) several writing implements and a score of small, thin objects. After a day like that, I took notice. In the years prior to diagnosis, while like many of you suffering symptoms that I simply ignored, I must have broken a small fortune in stemware. I just thought I was clumsy…okay maybe I was that too. I now know, however, that this is the ol’ MS at work. I’m paying much closer attention to every little thing I ho... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2018242 Fri, 05 Dec 2008 22:35:26 +0100 2018242 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2011147&cid=t_100645_107_f&fid=35762&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Er%2Fscienceblogs%2Fgrrlscientist%2F%7E3%2F474088815%2Fone_of_my_good_friends_now_dec.php Richard "Dick" Davisson in the courtyard outside the physics building at the University of Washington (2000 or 2001). Image courtesy of Christophe Verlinde. I have been lucky to know a lot of talented scientists while I was working my way through school. One of my very good friends (and drinking pals), physicist Richard (Dick) Davisson, was the son of Nobelist, Clinton Davisson, who won the Nobel prize in Physics in 1937. Interestingly, his maternal uncle, Sir Owen Willans Richardson, was also a Nobel prize winner in Physics (1928). Sadly for all of us who knew and loved him, Dick died in 2004 after I'd been working on my postdoc in NYC for nearly two years. But I learned today that some of my Seattle grad school friends have been writing a Wiki about him. It is an unconventional trib... Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2011147 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:22:23 +0100 2011147 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2011652&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fdecember-edition-hows-your-ms-today%2F “The sun is shining, the grass is green, the palm trees and evergreens sway. There’s never been such a day…” Bah, whatever! Cold is setting in (at least in the northern hemisphere) sunlight is long and low (when it decides to make an appearance at all!) and the days are so short that if I have a late lunch, I’ll likely have to turn on a lamp.  Adding to all of this is that I seemed to have moved into a neighborhood that goes all out in home holiday decoration; and me with multiple sclerosis and a bum hip, I won’t even be able to get lights into the bushes! Ah, well. It’s December, and I have multiple sclerosis. Each month, we take time in the first week to check in with one another. Now, we end another year and look to 2009, together. I fear my MS... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2011652 Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:15:23 +0100 2011652 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=2006558&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fphysical-therapy-for-multiple-sclerosis%2F Family is gone, dogs are settled, holiday lights are making there way up around the neighborhood…I can’t believe it is already December. My December includes outpatient physical therapy (PT) for my hip replacement. I’ve been having someone come into the house for a few weeks, but now it’s time to go to them. This will be my first go at physical therapy. Well, I had an evaluation at the University of Washington a few years ago, but that was mostly to get a prescription for foot support when my drop-foot was bad. I know many people with MS who have either regularly scheduled or ad-hoc physical therapy as part of their MS regime. I’ve been pretty good at keeping up with my post-op exercises (pretty good) and am actually bored with them. I’m looking forward ... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=2006558 Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:33:59 +0100 2006558 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1999416&cid=t_100645_109_f&fid=36089&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthesituationist.wordpress.com%2F2008%2F12%2F01%2Fsituationism-in-the-blogosphere-october-part-iii%2F Discussion with Robert Burton” “In On Being Certain, neurologist Robert Burton challenges his readers to ask one of the most basic—and crucial—of questions: how do we know what we know? With an engaging, conversational style, he tackles the neuropsychological underpinnings of belief and certainty, carefully examining these ubiquitous dynamics in light of what is known about how the mind works.” Read more . . . From Nueronarrative: “The Lucifer Effect: An Interview with Dr. Philip Zimbardo” “Social psychologist [and Situationist contributor] Philip Zimbardo has been studying the anatomy of human psychology for nearly four decades. In the summer of 1971, Dr. Zimbardo created the classic Stanford Prison Experiment, a simulation of prison life that investigated a provocative... The Situationist blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1999416 Mon, 01 Dec 2008 04:01:55 +0100 1999416 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1999098&cid=t_100645_107_f&fid=35762&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Er%2Fscienceblogs%2Fgrrlscientist%2F%7E3%2F470258459%2Fnavelgazing_courtesy_of_nature.php My friends and colleagues at Nature Network (yes, I am a member of their auspicious group, although I have yet to start a blog there), have been passing a meme around amongst themselves. Martin Fenner is the culprit who started this whole thing off, so go yell at him about it. Anyway, in an effort to reduce NN's inbreeding coefficient, I have decided that this is a perfectly good meme for the greater blogosphere, or at least for ScienceBlogs, especially since it is navel-gazing at its best, and who doesn't enjoy picking through their own belly-button lint? Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post... (Source: Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)) Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1999098 Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:30:14 +0100 1999098 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1991745&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fhow-did-multiple-sclerosis-shape-who-you-are%2F This week my sister’s family is in for a holiday visit and last night we were having a chat with my 15 year old niece about the tribulations of high school. The conversation turned to the absolute sureness about neigh everything in a person’s life at that age; how we are/were sure we have/had all the answers if somebody would just listen. Trying to explain (and I am not a parent, so I get this stuff wrong ALL the time) that so many more experiences will shape her choices and opinions in the future we discussed the fact that in two years time, she won’t dress the way she does now, likely not listen to much of the same music and will begin to find other interests and distastes. It was a fun exercise in what my sister, brother-in-law and all good parents foster each night ‘round eveni... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1991745 Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:56:47 +0100 1991745 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1985647&cid=t_100645_105_f&fid=36987&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Er%2FIvorKovicMd%2F%7E3%2F463022581%2F At least this is what Paul Boutin suggests you do. He is a blogger himself, writing for the Valleywag blog, and for The New York Times, and for The Wall Street Journal, and for Slate, and for Wired magazine. And in the latest issue of Wired magazine he wrote a provocative and interesting article about why you need to stop blogging. “It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.” - writes Boutin and adds, “That said, your blog will still draw the Net’s lowest form of life: The insult commenter.” He thinks Twitter is the way to go these days and finishes off with a tweet - @WiredReader: Kill yr blog. 2004 ov... Ivor Kovic, M.D. blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1985647 Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:15:19 +0100 1985647 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1968861&cid=t_100645_109_f&fid=35044&url=http%3A%2F%2Fadultaddstrengths.com%2F2008%2F11%2F18%2Fsocial-media-and-seo-scorecard%2F Conclusions Of the 25 different metrics I used, Gregor won 17, Peter Ladner won 6, and they tied on two. Gregor Robertson was the clear winner. He won every single category in the search engines if you don’t add the 2nd NPA Vancouver website. Gregor Robertson’s Online Campaigner was Kori Brus. who has a blog, and twitter account and is active online While the twitter jacking was a definite screw up, overall he performed far superior to his counterpart in Peter Ladner’s campaign, if in fact Peter did have a dedicated person for that. I couldn’t find out by googling it. Clearly not a good sign. Both campaigns could have done better in engaging people on Youtube, Flickr and Twitter instead of just old fashioned push broadcasts. They both could have had created groups o... Adult ADD Strengths blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1968861 Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:12:06 +0100 1968861 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1960526&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F11%2Fandrew-sullivan.html If you will indulge me, I occasionally deviate from my normal pattern of discussing topics about clinical lab software, the clinical lab industry, and healthcare in general to discuss blogs and blogging. I do this, in part, so that the readers of Lab Soft News will gain a better appreciation of this evolving form of communication. In short, it's important to understand what blogs are and what they are not. Andrew Sullivan is recognized as one of the earliest and best bloggers (see: The Daily Dish) so his recent publication in Atlantic (see: Why I Blog) caught my attention. Below are four paragraphs from the long article that I think are worth citing:This form of instant and global self-publishing, made possible by technology widely available only for the past decade or so, allows for n... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1960526 Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:13:14 +0100 1960526 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1947194&cid=t_100645_109_f&fid=35044&url=http%3A%2F%2Fadultaddstrengths.com%2F2008%2F11%2F05%2Fobama-vs-mccain-social-media%2F Conclusions Overall Barack Obama’s campaign has a larger, more comprehensive presence more followers or subscribers on the social media websites more interaction with those followers much greater results in search engines This is in spite of John McCain being a big political celebrity FAR longer than Barack Obama was. John McCain was first elected to congress in 1982, and even before McCain ran in 2008, other than George Bush, McCain was probably the best known, most interviewed, and most written about Republican politician. That’s why I laughed when I saw McCain’s celebrity ad about Obama, look at how many mention’s John McCain has in the Internet Movie Database, like Bill Clinton, he was jealous because he was no longer the biggest political celebrity in Washing... Adult ADD Strengths blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1947194 Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:01:23 +0100 1947194 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1947738&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fhow-do-you-make-sure-your-multiple-sclerosis-is-winterized%2F The rainy season has begun in Seattle. It’s dark when we wake, it’s wet, rainy and gray all day, and dark well before cocktail hour. You try to get as much done outside before the rains set in. Most of the leaves, however, don’t fall from the trees before the rains begin. This makes yard clean-up that much more of an effort. I’d think about leaving them until spring, but picking up after 3 dogs becomes too much of a land mine hunt if the leaves aren’t raked up regularly. I was a bit hamstrung this year as well; having surgery at the end of September. I got everything done I could before the cutting, but it wasn’t enough…it never is. Winter is setting in and I’m not ready for it; and sometimes I feel that way about multiple sclerosis. Every ti... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1947738 Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:26:33 +0100 1947738 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1945233&cid=t_100645_109_f&fid=35044&url=http%3A%2F%2Fadultaddstrengths.com%2F2008%2F11%2F05%2Fobama-vs-mccain-social-media%2F Conclusions Overall Barack Obama’s campaign has a larger, more comprehensive presence, more followers or subscribers on the social media websites and more interaction with those followers and much greater results in search engines. This is in spite of John McCain being a big political celebrity FAR longer than Obama was. McCain was first elected to congress in 1982, and even before McCain ran in 2008, other than George Bush, McCain was probably the best known, most interviewed, and most written about Republican politician. . That’s why I laughed when I saw McCain’s celebrity ad about Obama, look at how many mention’s John McCain has in the Internet Movie Database, like Bill Clinton, he was jealous because he was no longer the biggest political celebrity in Washingto... Adult ADD Strengths blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1945233 Sat, 08 Nov 2008 20:39:28 +0100 1945233 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1943575&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Ffinally-a-smaller-needle-for-ms-injections%2F Part of my post-operative treatment was a course of injectable blood thinners for two weeks after my release. When I was in the hospital bed, the nurses came in with a pre-filled syringe and wanted to teach me how to give myself a shot (yes I laughed!). Nobody likes self-injecting it’s just something we’ve all come to terms with. So I prepped myself and took the cap off the needle and laughed again! This needle was so small! It was so thin and so short…why couldn’t MS needles be this small? Apparently, now a MS needle IS this small! The makers of Betaseron (interferon beta-1b) announced last month that they have changed the delivery equipment of their drug (not the formulation) to the thinnest needle in MS injections. This new syringe has a 30-gauge mosquito bite of... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1943575 Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:14:23 +0100 1943575 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1939105&cid=t_100645_109_f&fid=35044&url=http%3A%2F%2Fadultaddstrengths.com%2F2008%2F11%2F05%2Fobama-vs-mccain-social-media%2F Conclusions Overall Barack Obama’s campaign has a larger, more comprehensive presence, and more interaction with people on the internet and in social media sites. This is in spite of John McCain being a big political celebrity FAR longer than Obama was. McCain was first elected to congress in 1982, and even before McCain ran in 2008, other than George Bush, McCain was probably the best known, most interviewed, and most written about Republican politician. Outside of Illinois, Barack Obama was largely unknown until he gave his famous keynote speech at the democratic convention in 2004. So 26 years of exposure vs 4 and yet Obama still massively dominates the online landscape. Obama’s website one of the best designed websites I’ve seen in 15 years online, far better design... Adult ADD Strengths blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1939105 Fri, 07 Nov 2008 07:16:12 +0100 1939105 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1939861&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fpost-election-day-hows-your-ms-today%2F Twenty-odd months of campaigns and we are now ready to move on as one country and get on with fixing the issues which need some serious overhaul. Let’s move on too, shall we? Every month we open up a forum for all of you to check in and keep track of one another regarding our multiple sclerosis. We catch up, we vent, we question, we answer; we reconnect! Every time I go back to the comments on this monthly blog I learn something, and that’s not an exaggeration! As far as my MS, I’ve been living in a simulated “big one.” Recovering from hip surgery has been so very much like my first big attack that I’m using that experience as a training of sorts. In the house, I have to use a walker. And when I go out, I’ve been using forearm crutches. I sleep at ... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1939861 Wed, 05 Nov 2008 19:38:49 +0100 1939861 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1917945&cid=t_100645_87_f&fid=34872&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.healthbolt.net%2F2008%2F10%2F28%2Fhealth-fitness-blogs-on-the-map%2F Looking for some new health and fitness blogs to read or prehaps searching for some old favorites like, say, Healthbolt? Then check out this neat Health and Fitness Blog map created by Mike from Beach Fitness. You can’t see the names of the blogs here as I had to reduce the size to get the map to fit. But if you click here, you’ll end up at the full screen, readable version of the map. It’s worth it. The map is a great resource and has introduced me to a number of health and fitness blogs I might never have found. One thing though. I’m thinking that the physical location of the blogs might be a little out of sync. After all, I write the Healthbolt blog from New Zealand and the b5Media network who owns the blog is in Canada, but on this map we are located somew... Healthbolt blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1917945 Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:35:36 +0100 1917945 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1907927&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Flets-discuss-ldn-for-ms-again%2F We’ve had a few discussions about LDN in the past. In fact, for one posting, I did a month’s worth of research to only come up with the title, “I Still Don’t Know Enough.” Pretty lame, I know! Since that post in 2006, a study has been commissioned by the National MS Society and is now in full swing. This is a double blinded/peer-reviewed study which will take some time. So, we’re not going to know the results for another year or so. The way LDN is thought to work (if “work” is the right word here) is to block certain receptors in the brain. It is most often used as an anti-opiate drug for people recovering from addiction. Whether it actually changes the course of MS or rather masks symptoms is the basis of the study. One might think; “H... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1907927 Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:24:45 +0100 1907927 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1901338&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F10%2Faperio-teaching.html I have been impressed by the extent to which Aperio, a company with a specialized focus on digital pathology, has pursued pathologist and client education as a component of its business model. As proof of this statement, I cite the following three educational activities currently being pursued by the company: A digital pathology blog (see: The Daily Scan) A pathology digital imaging conference that has been held on a yearly basis (see: Pathology Visions; October 26-28; 2008; San Diego) Periodic webinars (see, as a current example: The Power of Digital Pathology in Veterinary Pathology; October 31, 2008) Here's a description of the upcoming webinar on veterinary pathology: In this 60-minute complimentary webinar, discussion will center around how Aperio whole slide imaging and image a... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1901338 Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:38:35 +0100 1901338 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1901696&cid=t_100645_134_f&fid=36052&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.creative-weblogging%2Faudio%2F%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.daily-diabetic.com%2F50226711%2Fthe_30day_diabetes_miracle_diabetic_speaks_out_on_video_blog.php A new video blog that will document one woman's fight to control her diabetes. Jeannie Baellow, 54, is the winner of The Diabetes Challenge, a contest hosted by the Lifestyle Center of America (LCA). She has been living with Type 2 Diabetes for ten years. Her prize package included a trip to the LCA campus in Sedona, where she attended a "diabetes bootcamp" from October 5 to October 17. She will now undergo remote counseling with LCA consultants for an entire year with the goal of treating her diabetes. Jeannie has also been given a video camera which will be used to record her experiences for the video blog. The purpose of the v-blog is to provide an uncensored account of the average person's experience with the program, its ups and downs, its difficulties and triumphs. Jeannie w... Daily Diabetic blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1901696 Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0100 1901696 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1906399&cid=t_100645_122_f&fid=36582&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Er%2FSharpBrains%2F%7E3%2F430063963%2F If you are a blogger or read blogs often, you know that there are a good number of excellent blog carnivals focused on specific themes. If you are interested in medicine, you know what carnival to visit. Education, the same. Biology, neuroscience, nursing, birds, aging, philosophy...a variety of topics are very well covered in the blogosphere. What you probably haven't come across is a high-quality "metacarnival" or "carnival of carnivals", where you can read the best blog posts ACROSS topics, subjects, disciplines. This is why a few blog carnival "organizers" are launching next Monday a monthly rotating "MetaCarnival" to feature the most interesting posts from a variety of high-quality blog carnivals. Participating blog carnivals so far, alphabetica... SharpBrains blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1906399 Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:08:52 +0100 1906399 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1901339&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F10%2Fmainstream-medi.html I, for one, have gotten totally fed up with the complaints from mainstream journalists about how the newspaper industry is in a tailspin, in part because their business model is no longer working. One facet of this problem is that online classified advertising web sites like Craig's List are offering gratis what the newspapers provide for a fee. Another complaint is that the bloggers are "stealing" the journalists' good material. Also, bloggers are calling themselves "citizen journalists" but are not really card-carrying members of the fraternity. Get over it! Times change. Business models become obsolete. The issue that now needs to be addressed is how the mainstream media is going to adapt to these new realities. Well, it appears that this may now be h... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1901339 Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:47:41 +0100 1901339 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1894831&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F10%2Fnew-business-mo.html As a blogger for nearly three years, I have a special interest in the manner in which medical text book and journal publishers are responding to the competiton of medical content on the web. This is a variant on the similar challenge facing newspapers. I posted a previous note about this topic (see: Some Ideas About the Future of Medical Textbooks). In my mind, this issue reduces to this key issue: how can print publications with their higher production and distribution costs compete with electronic publications. Relevant to this topic, I  posted a blog note last May about a specialized medical search engine, SearchMedica (see: Search Engine for Healthcare Professionals). This specialized search engine has now added some very interesting and useful features. For example, you can limi... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1894831 Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:47:43 +0100 1894831 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1892191&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fmultiple-sclerosis-and-the-gift-of-receiving%2F I’ve spent the morning writing thank you notes today. The stack of people who have either stopped by, brought a meal, sent flowers or just make check-up phone calls over the past three weeks is really humbling. It lead me to today’s topic.There have been many times in the past couple of years when we’ve had comments about “allowing” someone to help (too many to find and link in this post). We all know that it feels good to do something for someone; we just hate being the someone who needs assistance. Cayrn (my fiancee) and I made an agreement when I decided to schedule this surgery. Knowing that she couldn’t be around 24/7 for the week or so that was recommended for care after discharge from hospital, I agreed to spend a week or so in a convalescent home... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1892191 Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:31:35 +0100 1892191 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1891919&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F10%2Fincreasing-your.html If you normally browse the web keeping, say, half a dozen or more tabs open on your browser simultaneously, you can stop reading now. If not, I suggest that you continue reading. If you do not use tabs in your web browser, I can save you a lot of time. Tabs are better than bookmarks for connecting to your favorite web sites each day and are very easy to set up. I first recommend that you use a browser such as Mozilla Firefox 3.0 and my instructions are based on this browser. Below is a brief set of instructions about how to set up tabbed browsing: First of all, copy the URLs of the web sites that you visit frequently each day on a piece of paper. Launch Mozilla and enter the URL of your first favorite site in the browser address bar. Now type Ctrl+T to create a new tab. Enter the URL... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1891919 Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:00:00 +0100 1891919 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1886833&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fdawn-bailiff-on-notes-from-a-minor-key%2F As promised, I’ll share notes from the author of our most recent Book Club Blog; Dawn Bailiff. Her work, “Notes From A Minor Key” has been the subject of our monthly review for the past couple of months. Dawn has much to write to us, so I’ll end my comments here. We thank Ms. Bailiff for her time in sharing a few thoughts with us and for telling her story, which is in parts, the story of many of us. Ladies and Gentlemen, Dawn Bailiff: I would like to thank those of you in the HealthTalk MS community who have taken the time to read, discuss, contemplate and even criticize my book. You are a group with a “good energy” who collectively refuses to be defeated or defined by the MonSter. I send special gratitude to Trevis for providing such a wonderful MS reso... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1886833 Fri, 17 Oct 2008 16:53:25 +0100 1886833 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1883563&cid=t_100645_147_f&fid=35750&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Er%2FHealthCareVox%2F%7E3%2F422817719%2Fblogging_no_longer_niche.html Today eMarketer reported on new data from Technorati suggesting that “the lines between blogging and the mainstream media have disappeared.”  That’s just one of the juicy bits of data highlighted in an eMarketer article that hit my e-mail box today regarding the growing global blogosphere.  While the new Technorati study is a bit skewed because the company’s user-base was surveyed, it still has some great insights.  Most importantly, one-third of bloggers worldwide had been contacted by a “brand or agency” to be a brand advocate.  This makes a lot of sense.  Many companies are viewing bloggers as ideal people to disseminate their messages. However, there is legitimate concern about whether all marketers are being transparent abou... HealthCareVox blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1883563 Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:13:43 +0100 1883563 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1880296&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Foh-so-thats-what-a-foley-catheter-is%2F In prior discussions here, we’ve talked about what many dread most as a potential MS treatment – catheterization. Like many of the medieval medical tools science has developed to help us cope with our symptoms. However, we tend to wait until far past the point they are needed to use them. At that point we wonder why we waited so bleeding long! For example, we put off a cane until we hardly can get out of the house anymore, then find that by using one we can actually walk around the block again. We scoff at the idea of a scooter, then realize how many kid’s soccer games we’ve missed or how many fun adventures we’ve said “no” to only after we’ve acquiesced. Using a catheter is another one of “those” topics How many UTIs does it take, how many fevers spiking and setting of... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1880296 Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:30:24 +0100 1880296 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1879773&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F10%2Fpost.html It can be awe-inspiring to occasionally look at the growth of web search and, in particular, the continuing success of Google. This topic was addressed in a recent article (see; Speaking Of Competition, Google’s Search Market Share Just Went Up Again In August To 63%). At the end of this note is a chart from the article. The following are some of my observations about these data: Total U.S. searches (i.e., queries) in August, 2008, were nearly 12 billion, a year-to-year increase of 19.6%. It's hard for me to envision a scenario in the near future in which search volume will decline. The percentage of total web searches attributable to Google continues to rise, amounting to 63.0% of all searches in August. This is a 4.5% gain in market share for the year. Yahoo has a 19.6% market share... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1879773 Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:28:09 +0100 1879773 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1879816&cid=t_100645_87_f&fid=34872&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.healthbolt.net%2F2008%2F10%2F14%2Fname-that-tune-baby%2F No one ever said baby naming is easy. With hundreds of thousands of names to choose from, family expectations, and societal trends and fads, it’s definitely something that expectant parents agonize over. One California couple, having a hard time making a decision,  has come up with a unique baby naming plan.   Having narrowed the choice down to 17 boys and girls names, they’ve set up an online poll listing the names and hope that the world, or at least cyberspace, will help them decide.  Want to help them out? Cast your vote here… Tags: baby names, baby naming, Healthbolt, names, online pollsShare This (Source: Healthbolt) Healthbolt blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1879816 Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:47:21 +0100 1879816 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1873231&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fdont-put-me-in-a-homeunless-my-ms-really-calls-for-one%2F Not the most pleasant of subjects to broach, for certain; the idea of a convalescent home as permanent or even temporary refuge from multiple sclerosis (MS). The topic, however is one which we should give a good hard think and maybe even blurt a few words out to those most important to us. For many of us, the day when Long Term Care Insurance (LTCI) was available is long in our past. First things first, check to see if you have LTCI and check to see how “good” it is. If you don’t have LTCI, find out if you can still purchase a policy. Policies vary just like health insurance policies, life insurance and auto plans so make sure you do some shopping around. The obvious impetus for my coming face-to-face with this topic was my recent surgery. I now feel we were quite unprepa... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1873231 Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:24:05 +0100 1873231 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1871380&cid=t_100645_105_f&fid=36987&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Er%2FIvorKovicMd%2F%7E3%2F419098479%2F Number of articles about blogs published in journals indexed in Medline is constantly growing. The first article was published back in 2003, but in 2008 was a substantial step forward. Are blogs becoming a hot topic among medical researchers? Take a look at the chart > These 46 articles were written by 85 authors from 20 different countries and published in 41 journals. Eighteen articles come from US and the rest are scattered all over the world. (Source: Ivor Kovic, M.D.) Ivor Kovic, M.D. blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1871380 Mon, 13 Oct 2008 02:55:13 +0100 1871380 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1862660&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F10%2Fseeking-a-secon.html In case any of you have missed this, the web with the help of "Dr. Google" is a major source of medical information for a broad swath of healthcare consumers in the U.S. Whenever I make this point to clinicians, the response from a few is always: Tisk, tisk. What a shame. There is so much bad stuff out there. To which I usually reply: Uhhh, there's also a few bad docs. Informed patients can help to weed them out Let's just agree on one thing. The process of healthcare consumers seeking medical advice on the web will not go away. The important role of healthcare professionals should be to direct consumers to the best web sites. A recent article in the New York Times addressed some of these issues (see: Logging On for a Second (or Third) Opinion). Below is an excerpt from it: ... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1862660 Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:59:46 +0100 1862660 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1859411&cid=t_100645_155_f&fid=34629&url=http%3A%2F%2Flabsoftnews.typepad.com%2Flab_soft_news%2F2008%2F10%2Fsome-ideas-abou.html I had a recent discussion with an academic physician who also serves as the editor of a medical textbook which he told me accounts for some 10% of the yearly sales of the publisher. He remarked that many such textbooks are now expensive "boat anchors" and that the future belongs to some type of alternative electronic publication. However, neither he or his publisher fully understand exactly what will replace the current medical textbook or the underlying revenue model. For what it's worth, here are some of my ideas about what some possible next steps in the evolution of the medical textbook: I believe that the successor to the medical textbook of today will be what I will call here the e-text-blog. Stated briefly, it will consist of a web-based electronic text about a medical to... Lab Soft News blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1859411 Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:34:44 +0100 1859411 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1859570&cid=t_100645_107_f&fid=35762&url=http%3A%2F%2Ffeeds.feedburner.com%2F%7Er%2Fscienceblogs%2Fgrrlscientist%2F%7E3%2F412873497%2Fmeet_me_in_nyc_tomorrow.php The NYC millionth comment party has been scheduled! ScienceBlogs has rented out the top floor of the Delancey and will be providing pizza and a bar tab up to about $600 (drinks over that amount will not be covered) -- FREE! The Delancey will be suspending their usual cover charge, just for us. ScienceBlogs' NYC area Millionth Comment party: Date: Tuesday, 7 October 2008 Time: 7pm ET until ??? Location: the top floor of The Delancey Bar and Nightclub, 168 Delancey Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side [map] SciBling hosts: ME and some of my ScienceBlogs colleagues, PhysioProf and Jake Young, and a special guest appearance by my friend and former ScienceBlogs colleague, Carl Zimmer, who now writes his blog at Discover magazine. Also present will be some of the wonderful people who provid... Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted) blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1859570 Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:59:59 +0100 1859570 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1851316&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fcarol-king-and-ms%2F No, Carol King (to my knowledge) DOES NOT have multiple sclerosis. This week, however, as I prepare to leave my hospital room (can I take that plasma flat-screen with me?) and make my way home the words of her song, “You’ve Got a Friend,” keep repeating in my ears. I was a kid when “Tapestry” came out in 1971 and I couldn’t tell you the first time I heard the song, but through the years the words; “Winter, spring, summer or fall…all you’ve got to do is call..” have found themselves ingrained into my person. I’ve always held this lyric a lofty and noble goal as someone’s friend. I fell short of it, but feel a better person for trying. I’m also finding that it was an investment I didn’t even know I was making... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1851316 Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:59:01 +0100 1851316 http://www.medworm.com/index.php?rid=1845208&cid=t_100645_129_f&fid=36038&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.healthtalk.com%2Fmultiple-sclerosis%2Flife-with-ms%2Fhows-your-ms-today-october-edition%2F Since January of 2007, we’ve been asking you to tell us about your life with MS in our monthly “How’s Your MS Today” posting. We’ve taken the first Wednesday of each month (with a few exceptions for my mental slips) to open a forum for all of us to check in, check up and even let us know that you’re checking out for a bit. It’s always one of our most popular posts and never seems to fail in bringing one of the “lurkers” out of their shell and onto the comments page. I like that a lot! I’ve sent this page in to Natalie a couple of days early as today is a post-operative day for me. While a morphine induced ramble might make for keen entertainment, I’m pretty sure the proper sequencing of keys to hit to write, address and send... Life with MS blogs http://www.medworm.com/rss/comments.php?id=1845208 Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:44:28 +0100 1845208