Published on Wednesday 2nd May 2007 .
MSNBC has an article about research being done by Dr. Lance Becker at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Resuscitation Science. What Dr. Becker’s research is showing is that even an hour after clinical death, the oxygen deprived heart cells of a heart attack patient are still alive. His research also shows that it is the reperfusion, the resumption of oxygen supply to the cells, that actually results in cell death. When oxygen is resupplied to previously deprived cells, apoptosis occurs. It appears as though the cells cannot distinguish between the cells being replenished with oxygen and cells that should be programmatically killed, like cancer cells. Rather than helping, the return of oxygen to the cells actually causes more harm.
Dr. Becker’s research continues to study this process, and how to best revive a patient. His suggestion is to slow the uptake of oxygen, rather than increase it. Among the possible solutions for slowing oxygen uptake is putting patients on a heart-lung bypass machine to continue circulation until the heart can be safely restarted. Dr. Becker has also developed a slurry solution of ice and salt that can be injected into the bloodstream to induce hypothermia. Research has shown that lowering the body temperature to 33°C (91.4°F) can slow the chemical reactions started by reperfusion.
Overall, the research is very interesting and I am excited to see what it turns up. Of course, I also wonder what this means for organ donation with heart attack patients. I don’t even know if organs from a heart attack patient are generally accepted for organ donation, or if the lifestyle that led up to the heart attack makes these organs undesirable for donation. I already wonder how and where doctors draw the line when it comes to continuing to try to save a patient and calling a patient’s time of death to ensure that the organs are still viable for donation. Maybe that’s just what happens on TV?
Note: I had a much better write-up for this article, until my browser decided to stop loading pages and it prevented me from copying to the clipboard what I had already written.
Published on Saturday 28th April 2007 .
I have had two good April Fool’s Day hoaxes on my blog. Here is the Museum of Hoaxes‘ list of Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time. I am only through the first ten, but I already have a few favorites:
Read on for more great hoaxes.
Published on Friday 20th April 2007 .
These comic book panels are unintentionally hilarious. Some of the hilarity is a bit crude, but it’s interesting how the change in language over the years and political correctness does that.
Published on Saturday 24th March 2007 .
TMNT was released in theaters Friday, and I have to say that this is the best Turtles movie so far. Yes, the script was oozing (pun intended) with cheese and it was a cartoon with a PG rating, but it was very entertaining. Also, the animation and the voice acting was very well done, including the delivery of classic lines like, "I love being a turtle!" I also think that it properly displayed what I always felt was Eastman and Laird’s original vision of the Turtles, and it should, with Peter Laird as one of the executive producers.
My first exposure to the Turtles was through the original cartoon series. The cartoon always felt, well, cartoony. That was great for a Saturday morning cartoon in the late ’80s and early ’90s. However, it wasn’t until later that I discovered the Turtles true origins: a comic book parody of New Mutants and Daredevil. The original artwork was much darker than the first animated series, and it wasn’t until first live action movie, and then again the 2003 animated series, that the darker Turtles received mainstream exposure.
Fast forward a few years to 2007, and you finally get to see the Turtles as I imagine Eastman and Laird would have originally wanted them. The animation resembles the manga style, with flowing character movements, closeups during battle scenes and even the momentary mid-air pause during leaps from building to building. So, yeah, while it is not going to win any awards (although I think the great fight scene on the rooftop should be nominated for one), it was a very entertaining movie. Of course, I might be biased having grown up with the Turtles.
Now here’s to hoping that Transformers won’t suck.
Published on Wednesday 24th January 2007 .
The New York Times has an interesting word analysis tool to examine the State of the Union addresses given by President George W. Bush. Choose from a pre-selected list of words, or type in your own word(s), and the word(s) will be highlighted in the transcripts on the page. Below the transcripts appear the selected word in the context of the speech. To the right side of the page you get a numerical and visual usage analysis of your chosen word other words found in his addresses.
It’s an interesting way to visualize the President’s speeches without having to manually search through the transcripts.
Published on Tuesday 12th December 2006 .
I saw this video on YouTube of the Charlie Brown Christmas with the voices of the cast of Scrubs. It has some adult themes, so I won’t post the embedded video here. It’s pretty funny. I’m not sure of the background on the video, but I can only guess that the cartoon was redubbed with spliced audio from Scrubs.
Published on Thursday 9th November 2006 .
I have had this item in my Google Reader list for the past week and I haven’t had a chance to read it until just now. This blog post has several clips of Richard Dawkins, who is an evolutionary theorist (not necessarily that his theories are evolutionary, but that his theories are on evolution). The video clips are a mix of Google Video and YouTube videos. So, if you can’t see some of them, your network admin may be blocking one or both of the sites. Hell, Blogspot maybe blocked where you are, at which point you should just find the internet somewhere else.
The second video clip is particularly interesting, given the recent news about Ted Haggard, the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals. The end of the clip shows Richard Dawkins and his crew being shooed off of the NAE property by an irate Ted Haggard.
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