Archive for the 'Health' Category
IBM’s Watson Goes to Medical School
November 1st, 2012Via: New York Times: Next up for Watson, I.B.M.’s clever question-answering computer? A stint as a medical student at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. The collaboration, announced on Tuesday, includes a bit of controlled crowdsourcing, with the Cleveland clinicians and medical school students answering Watson’s questions and correcting […]
Shit and Gasoline in Manhattan Floodwater
November 1st, 2012Via: ABC News: Water is everywhere in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy – in basements, on the streets and in transit systems – but the one place that flood water is most dangerous is in your body. ABC News chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser collected floodwater and drinking water in some of […]
Personalized Bioweapons
October 29th, 2012Via: The Atlantic: As we write this, soldiers with bionic limbs are returning to active duty, and autonomous cars are driving down our streets. Yet most of these advances are small in comparison with the great leap forward currently under way in the biosciences—a leap with consequences we’ve only begun to imagine. More to the […]
Doctors Call Tobacco Industry Terrorist Movement
October 29th, 2012This is interesting, coming from a group of people who think that cancer causing radiation is a viable way of treating cancer… While I find smoking to be a disgusting habit that I have personally seen ruin many lives, I wonder what other behaviors will be linked with “The Terrorists”? How about consuming raw dairy […]
Use of Novartis Flu Vaccines Suspended in Several Countries
October 28th, 2012Via: CBC: Canada is following the lead of several European countries and suspending distribution of flu vaccine made by the pharmaceutical firm Novartis. The decision relates to the discovery by the company of tiny clumps of virus particles in some batches of flu vaccines made at the Novartis production facility in Italy. Health Canada, which […]
World’s Most Powerful Laser Beams to Zap Nuclear Waste, Cure Cancer [???]
October 27th, 2012Via: Bloomberg: The European Union will spend about 700 million euros ($900 million) to build the world’s most powerful lasers, technology that could destroy nuclear waste and provide new cancer treatments. The Extreme Light Infrastructure project has obtained funding for two lasers to be built in the Czech Republic and Romania, Shirin Wheeler, spokeswoman for […]
DHS Moving X-ray Body Scanners from Large Airports to Smaller Ones
October 24th, 2012Via: CNBC: The Transportation Security Administration is removing full-body, X-ray scanners from major U.S. airports, and shipping them to less busy locations.
Less Boneheaded Farming
October 22nd, 2012Via: New York Times: The study was done on land owned by Iowa State University called the Marsden Farm. On 22 acres of it, beginning in 2003, researchers set up three plots: one replicated the typical Midwestern cycle of planting corn one year and then soybeans the next, along with its routine mix of chemicals. […]
Leaked Report Suggests Long-Known Flood Threat To Nuclear Plants
October 22nd, 2012Via: Huffington Post: An un-redacted version of a recently released Nuclear Regulatory Commission report highlights the threat that flooding poses to nuclear power plants located near large dams — and suggests that the NRC has misled the public for years about the severity of the threat, according to engineers and nuclear safety advocates. “The redacted […]
Italy: Court Rules Mobile Phones Can Cause Brain Tumors
October 20th, 2012Via: Telegraph: Innocente Marcolini, 60, an Italian businessman, fell ill after using a handset at work for up to six hours every day for 12 years. Now Italy’s Supreme Court in Rome has blamed his phone saying there is a “causal link” between his illness and phone use, the Sun has reported. Mr Marcolini said: […]
