| NCBI rolfs. |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|05:50 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Ween - Take Me Away | ] |
One of the blogs I watch on my LJ friendslist is NCBI rofl. NCBI, if you didn't know, is the organization responsible for both Pubmed, which is a medical-journal search engine, and BLAST. BLAST is the tool that allows you to search and compare all of the genetic data in Genbank. So if you want to know how similar two genes are, you just go look them up. Go ahead, put your favorite organism in here and see what you get. Scientific name may be the only thing that works, so if you get nothing, try again in latin. You'll eventually get to a page that looks like this. Then take that accession number, go over to BLAST, and see what you get! It's fun!
Anyway, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) nbci_rofl looks through the Pubmed entries for funny articles. Like any humor site, it's hit-or-miss. Yesterday they fell prey to a paper with a funny title that isn't at all about what it advertises, for example. But for the most part, it's a hilarious site. Take today's entry: Clowns for the prevention of preoperative anxiety in children: a randomized controlled trial.
"OBJECTIVE: To determine if specially trained professional clowns allayed preoperative anxiety and resulted in a smooth anesthetic induction compared to the use of midazolam or no intervention. METHODS: This was a randomized, controlled, and blinded study conducted with children 3-8 years of age undergoing general anesthesia and elective outpatient surgery. Patients were assigned to one of three groups: Group 1 did not receive midazolam or clown presence; group 2 received 0.5 mg x kg(-1) oral midazolam 30 min before surgery up to a maximum of 15 mg; and group 3 had two specially trained clowns present upon arrival to the preoperative holding area and throughout operating room (OR) entrance and mask application for inhalation induction of anesthesia. Okay, that's pretty awesome. But wait, it gets better! Just look at these results! The children were videotaped for later grading. RESULTS: The clown group had a statistically significant lower modified-Yale Preoperative Anxiety Scale score in the preoperative holding area compared to the control and midazolam group. The clowns' effect on anxiety reduction continued when the children entered the OR but was equal at this point to the midazolam group. Upon application of the anesthesia mask no significant differences were detected between the groups. CONCLUSIONS: This study found that the use of preoperative medically trained clowns for children undergoing surgery can significantly alleviate preoperative anxiety. However, clowns do not have any effect once the anesthesia mask is introduced." Man, do Israeli pediatricians have too much time on their hands or what? Awesome. |
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| Joined the Army! |
[Dec. 11th, 2009|10:28 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  fine | ] |
| [ | music |
| | I started The Wall a the beginning of this entry. I'm now nearly through. | ] |
So, yesterday I finished a rather long process. Here's the official skinny: I am enlisting/reenlisting in the United States (list branch of service) ARMY RESERVE this date for 8 years and 0 weeks beginning in pay grade E-4 of which 3 years and 0 weeks is considered an Active Duty Obligation, and 5 years and 0 weeks will be served in the Reserve Component of the Service in which I have enlisted. If this is an intial enlistment, I must serve a total of eight (8) years, unless I am sooner discharged or otherwise extended by the appropriate authority. This eight year service requirement is called the Military Service Obligation. I'd reproduce my signature for you at this point, but that's soooo last century. I signed this with a fingerprint on a little scanner. That part was pretty badass.
( All the rest of the important stuff is under here... ) |
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| List topic! |
[Dec. 6th, 2009|07:29 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | cheerful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Vikes-Cards is just starting | ] |
1. This is an entertaining read. Seems that George Will has been up in arms about those hacked emails from the climate change researchers that have been all up in the news. He's claiming that they show that the data on global warming can't be trusted. Thing is, he's been using the data FROM THOSE SAME RESEARCHERS for years because he thinks they show that warming stopped back in 1997. Trying to have and eat cake at the same time is always lolworthy.
( As usual, more parts of the list are under here... ) |
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