How many more will he win? An amazing match… And what a final set, 16-14! Kudos to Roddick for playing so well… A shame there had to be a loser in this one… —DC
The representatives at the Second Constitutional Convention agreed on a lofty statement of goals on this day in 1776, seeking “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” by declaring independence from Great Britain. Without phones or e-mail, all thirteen colonies approved the document by the ninth, they chose a calligrapher on the nineteenth, and most of them were gathered again to sign it on the second of August. On this anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, I hope we all will commit anew to these values, even if we don’t have to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” to accomplish it. —G. Armour Van Horn
What an amazing beginning… Let us never forget the wonderful meaning of Independence Day! —DC
Hi Folks, I’m having some problems with my trusty (heretofore) HP laptop… Hope to be back online by Monday. Have a great weekend and I’ll talk with you again soon! —DC
At least 35,000 years ago, in the depths of the last ice age, the sound of music filled a cave in what is now southwestern Germany, the same place and time early Homo sapiens were also carving the oldest known examples of figurative art in the world.
Music and sculpture — expressions of artistic creativity, it seems — were emerging in tandem among some of the first modern humans when they first began spreading through Europe or soon after.
Archaeologists reported Wednesday the discovery last fall of a bone flute and two fragments of ivory flutes that they said represent the earliest known flowering of music-making in Stone Age culture… Read more…
ScienceDaily (June 23, 2009) — We humans prefer to be addressed in our right ear and are more likely to perform a task when we receive the request in our right ear rather than our left. In a series of three studies, looking at ear preference in communication between humans, Dr. Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli from the University “Gabriele d’Annunzio” in Chieti, Italy, show that a natural side bias, depending on hemispheric asymmetry in the brain, manifests itself in everyday human behavior… Read more…
So according to the study, which was done in a noisy night club, speak into a clubber’s right ear if you have a request! (~_^) —DC
Why are we humans so good at seeing in color? Why do we have eyes on the front of our heads rather than on the sides, like horses? And how is it that we find it so easy to read when written language didn’t even exist until a few thousand years ago—a virtual millisecond in evolutionary time?
Most of us, understandably, have never given much thought to questions like these. What is surprising is that most cognitive scientists haven’t either. People who study the brain generally ask how it works the way it does, not why. But Mark Changizi, a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the author of “The Vision Revolution,” is indeed a man who asks why, and lucky for us: His ideas about the brain and mind are fascinating, and his explanations for our habits of seeing are, for the most part, persuasive…
Changizi theorizes that “color vision is useful for distinguishing the changes in other people’s skin color — changes that are caused by shifts in the volume and oxygenation levels of the blood.” He argues that “such shifts, like blushing, often signal emotional states,” and “the ability to see them is adaptive because it helps an observer to ‘read’ states of mind and states of health in others, information that is in turn useful for predicting their behavior.” He goes on to say that human “brains evolved in a time when people lived their entire lives without ever seeing someone with a skin color different from their own.” Therefore, “the skin color we grow up seeing…is ‘neutral’ to us” and “serves as a kind of baseline from which we notice even minor deviations in tint or hue.”
U.S. News & World Report has once again ranked the nation’s top children’s hospitals, and 10 institutions took honors as the best of the best.
Of 160 hospitals considered, the 10 were the only ones to rank in all 10 specialties evaluated.
They are (listed alphabetically):
Children’s Hospital (Denver)
Children’s Hospital Boston
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Children’s Medical Center (Dallas)
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
Johns Hopkins Children’s Center (Baltimore)
New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital
St. Louis Children’s Hospital-Washington University
Texas Children’s Hospital (Houston)
The specialties included cancer, diabetes/endocrine disorders, digestive disorders, heart and heart surgery, kidney disorders, neonatal care, neurology and neurosurgery, orthopaedics, respiratory disorders, and urology.
For the third year in a row, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was ranked the best children’s hospital in the country, with a score of 100, followed by Children’s Hospital Boston, with a score of 96.5.
The top 20 children’s hospitals and their scores:
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia:100
Children’s Hospital Boston: 96.5
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Memphis, Tenn.): 87.2
Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston: 64.3
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center: 63.6
Seattle Children’s Hospital: 53.8
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York City): 52.8
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles: 48.1
Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, Baltimore: 48
Children’s Hospital Denver: 43.2
Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford (Palo Alto, Calif.): 41.9
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta: 40.2
Children’s Cancer Hospital-University of Texas M.D. Anderson (Houston): 39.7
Children’s Memorial Hospital, Chicago: 39.4
Children’s National Medical Center (Washington, D.C.): 37.8
New York-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital: 37.2
UCSF Children’s Hospital (San Francisco): 36.7
University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital (Minneapolis): 36.4
Hospitals were ranked by reputation, medical outcomes, and care-related indicators such as patient volume, nursing staff, and availability of specialized programs based on answers to a 65-page survey developed by health care specialists for the magazine.
Of the 160 hospitals contacted, 98 responded.
The complete list of hospitals is available online at www.usnews.com/childrenshospitals. The rankings also appear in the August issue of the U.S. News & World Report, scheduled for publication July 21.
Of all weather phenomena, lightning is perhaps the most unacknowledged threat. Summer is peak season for lightning fatalities, which is why June 21 marks the commencement of Lightning Safety Week. Here, tips from the National Weather Service’s guide to lightning safety that will help you and your family weather a storm:
Avoid open areas. Don’t be the tallest object in the area.
Stay away from isolated tall trees, towers or utility poles. Lightning tends to strike the taller objects in an area.
Stay away from metal conductors such as wires or fences. Metal does not attract lightning, but lightning can travel long distances through it.
Have a lightning safety plan. Know where you’ll go for safety and how much time it will take to get there. Make sure your plan allows enough time to reach safety.
Postpone activities. Before going outdoors, check the forecast for thunderstorms. Consider postponing activities to avoid being caught in a dangerous situation.
Monitor the weather. Look for signs of a developing thunderstorm such as darkening skies, flashes of lightning or increasing wind.
Get to a safe place. If you hear thunder, even a distant rumble, immediately move to a safe place. Fully enclosed buildings with wiring and plumbing provide the best protection. Sheds, picnic shelters, tents or covered porches do NOT protect you from lightning. If a sturdy building is not nearby, get into a hard-topped metal vehicle and close all the windows. Stay inside until 30 minutes after the last rumble of thunder.
If you hear thunder, don’t use a corded phone except in an emergency. Cordless phones and cell phones are safe to use.
Keep away from electrical equipment and wiring.
Water pipes conduct electricity. Don’t take a bath or shower or use other plumbing during a storm.
May we have a moment of silence for the passing of the white coat long worn by doctors.
As we noted last week, AMA delegates holding their annual meeting were slated to vote on a recommendation that hospitals ban white coats in a bid to help protect patients from infection.
Well, the votes are in and the ban was approved. Delegates said they agreed that the risk of cuffs spreading infection between hospital patients isn’t worth the symbolism of the white coat.
The language of the resolution is vague on the particulars of what docs should wear; The AMA said only that it advocates “the adoption of hospital guidelines for dress codes that minimize transmission of nosocomial infections, particularly in critical and intensive care units.” That’s a step some hospitals have already taken.
But Peter Ragusa, a student involved in drafting the proposal, said the resolution’s intent was to do away with coats, long sleeves and ties for medical staff coming into contact with patients.
Now, backers just have to get hospitals to go along with it. “The next step,” Ragusa said, “is working with the American Hospital Association and various hospital groups around the country to implement the policy.”
A team of researchers led by Dr. Jayakrishna Ambati at the University of Kentucky has discovered a biological marker for neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of blindness in older adults.
The marker, a receptor known as CCR3, shows strong potential as a means for both the early detection of the disease and for preventive treatment. The findings were reported in an article published online Sunday by the prestigious journal Nature…
…The research team discovered that CCR3 not only provides a unique signature for CNV, but the gene actively promotes the growth of these abnormal blood vessels in the eye. Thus the same anti-CCR3 antibodies used to detect CNV could potentially be useful as a clinical treatment to prevent macular degeneration.
The early results look promising. Treatment with anti-CCR3 antibodies reduced CNV in mice by about 70 percent, as opposed to 60 percent with VEGF-based treatments currently in clinical use… Read more…
Intermittent exotropia in childhood may nearly triple risk for mental health problems in adulthood
WEDNESDAY, June 10 (HealthDay News) — Children with the eye condition intermittent exotropia (IXT) have a nearly three-fold increase in risk for a mental health disorder in adulthood, according to a study in the June issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.
Jeff A. McKenzie, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and colleagues assembled data on a cohort in Minnesota, who were under 19 years of age and were diagnosed with IXT from 1975 to 1994 and a control group matched for sex and year of birth. The subjects’ medical records were reviewed to test a theorized connection between childhood IXT and mental health disorders later in life.
The researchers found that, of the 183 subjects with childhood IXT, 97 were diagnosed with a mental health disorder in adulthood compared to 55 of the 183 control subjects. By sex, 41 of 65 males and 56 of 118 females in the IXT group had a mental health diagnosis compared with 22 of 66 males and 33 of 117 females in the control group.
“This population-based, nested-control study found that children with IXT have a nearly three-fold increased risk of developing mental illness by early adulthood compared with controls. Although IXT has been reported to occur more frequently in females, males with IXT were significantly more likely than controls or females with IXT to have mental health emergency department visits or hospitalizations, suicidal or homicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. Further study is needed to determine whether interventions for IXT can decrease or otherwise alter the future development of mental illness,” the authors write.
ScienceDaily (June 11, 2009) — It’s rare when real-world events perfectly mirror experiments that scientists are conducting. That’s why neuroscientists at the University of Washington were delighted at the reactions of former President George W. Bush and Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki when an Iraqi reporter flung his shoes toward the two men during a Baghdad news conference.
When Bush ducked and Maliki didn’t flinch as the first shoe sailed toward them, it was a real-world example supporting the theory that there are two independent pathways in the human visual system.
“The original idea proposed is that one system guides your actions and the other guides your perception. The interesting part is the ‘action’ system allows the brain to ‘see’ things your eyes do not perceive,” said Jeffrey Lin, a UW psychology doctoral student and lead author of a paper appearing June 11 in the journalCurrent Biology. Co-authors are Scott Murray and Geoffrey Boynton, UW psychology assistant and associate professors, respectively.
“When we throw two balls at you with very similar trajectories, they may look the same to your perceptual system, but your brain can automatically calculate which one is more threatening and trigger a dodging motion before you’ve even realized what has happened,” said Lin… Read more…
When should a parent schedule a comprehensive eye assessment for a baby? Clinical research has shown that at 6 months, the average baby has reached a number of critical developmental milestones, making this an appropriate age for the first eye and vision assessment.
According to the American Optometric Association’s (AOA) 2008 American Eye-Q(R) survey, which tracks public knowledge and understanding of a wide range of issues related to eye and visual health, only 13 percent of parents make sure their children receive a comprehensive eye assessment in their first year.
It’s estimated that one in 10 children is at risk from an undiagnosed eye or vision problem that, if left untreated, can lead to difficulties later in school or even permanent vision loss. Additionally, many children at risk for eye and vision problems are not being identified at an early age, when many of those problems might be prevented or more easily corrected.
Infant eye and vision assessments offer early detection of vision and eye health problems and are critical to a child’s development. Through the Optometry’s Charity(TM) - The AOA Foundation’s public health program, InfantSEE(R), optometrists provide a one-time, comprehensive eye assessment to infants in their first year of life, typically between the ages of 6 and 12 months. These assessments are provided at no-cost to all families, regardless of families’ ability to pay or access to insurance coverage…
DR. DICKSON CHEN, OD, FAAO
2003 California Young Optometrist-of-the-Year
My Practice Website: www.hdvision.health.officelive.com
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dchen2020@gmail.com
Though you'll find I'm just a mild-mannered Pasadena, CA optometrist by day... Not only will I share with you here valuable information concerning your vision and health, I hope you'll also glean from my postings just how varied and eclectic my many interests are. I look forward to your comments but above all... Enjoy!
