Monday, November 30, 2009

researchdigest: Mapping the unborn baby's brain in 3D. London hospital first in the world to offer high quality MRI scans of foetus: http://bit.ly/4Ms29Q http://ping.fm/01Te4
Our lives are structured by familial/social obligations....

Sunday, November 29, 2009

The primary purpose of sleep must be emotional regulation. And any deficits in such regulation must have corollary attentional deficits. Attention, then, is a feature of emotion....

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Are you risk neutral? How do you keep yourself risk neutral?
http://ping.fm/E9wUi
Quote Details: Albert Einstein: Reality is merely an... - The Quotations Page http://ping.fm/mKoRw
Preference articulation vs. Pruning

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Humanity as an emergent property of mind?

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

http://ping.fm/XC6kc
A&E patients are admitted at last minute 'to meet targets' - Daily Mail http://ping.fm/PAANe
Sustained low grade hypothermia as a route to improved longevity?
Idiocy has always been contagious
If I say "Life is complex", do you hear "Life is complicated"?
Do you answer the question asked, the question implied or the question you want to hear?
People with severe chronic pain who won't take painkillers are just aggravating....

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Friday, November 13, 2009

Thursday, November 12, 2009

"Strong Opinions, Weakly Held"
http://ping.fm/llkXp
How well prepared are medical students for their first year as doctors? The views of consultants and specialist registrars in two teaching hospitals
C Matheson, D Matheson
Fasting before a cholesterol test 'is a waste their time' - Telegraph.co.uk http://ping.fm/eOYRy
http://ping.fm/f2ITB
De-contextualise, Re-contextualise.
http://ping.fm/nzl15
Symptoms represent threshold effects. Physiological systems are robust; homeostasis aims to prevent such threshold effects. Mitigating interventions reduce entropy: such interventions can be milder and slower.

So, treat the numbers. [Even in the absence of threshold effects aka symptoms.]
Utility of post hoc analyses given large sample sizes?
http://ping.fm/HbPJL
http://ping.fm/5BDf0
http://ping.fm/abNd8
What is the risk of cefalosporin sensitivity in Penicillin-sensitive patients? My memory of medical school teaching was 10%, however a search just completed shows that such sensitivity is less than 1%. Calibrating and updating my entire knowledge base is impossible. How then to proceed? What do you do?
http://books.google.com/books?id=amrb0888d4UC&pg=PA194&lpg=PA194&dq=[Intentional+self-harm+by+sharp+object]+%2B+[suicide+risk]&source=bl&ots=OfqxEWYxF9&sig=F__6ZrQNilf12G59OeFQ3nLcCYA&hl=en&ei=y337SqPSA5iOjAf24MmLBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
What is the sociocultural correlate of deflation?
At species level, controversy has great utility; at the individual level it does not.
If Satori is entirely a neurological event is DBS a route to enlightenment?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Monday, November 09, 2009

20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall - (Germany) http://ping.fm/50Jlx

Saturday, November 07, 2009

The Most Creative People in Health Care http://ping.fm/RV2dy
Calvin Coolidge http://ping.fm/1R71c
"Passing on the bill for treating Aids to very poor countries would be a colossal betrayal."

!? There seems a colossal disconnect here....
Happiness = Meaning + Pleasure?
Inappropriate acute medical admissions are pareto inefficient. Doctors are aware of this, but it is easier in a socialist healthcare model to accede to social pressures because of the disjunction between costs and benefits.

I am fast approaching my STOP.
Re-reading MacDonald: are treatment effects binary? Of course not, physiology is fractal!
It's a truism that the more complicated a mechanism the more error prone. What ubiquitous mechanism is more complicated than the brain?
Clinical treatments aim to maintain or restore physiological parameters to preserve organ function hierarchically (brain, heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, gut, remainder). Because physiological systems are dynamic, correction is not the aim and velocity is also a consideration.

If the systems cannot self-correct or sustain the forced corrections treatment is considered futile. Non-optimal organ function is acceptable; all systems degrade over time so the accepted metric is quality of life.
If experiences are immortal, recall is repetition and reflection is extension. In an autistic world such manipulations are new experiences without losing the benefits of frequency as salience.
Rare events are cumulatively common

Friday, November 06, 2009

"Oh Shnocks! The state of healthcare technology in '09" http://ping.fm/fLJYp
http://sentenc.es/
"human attention doesn't scale"?
Direct Evidence for Spinal Cord Involvement in Placebo Analgesia -- Eippert et al. 326 (5951): 404 -- Science http://ping.fm/xXKTK
what's beyond logic happens beneath will;
nor can these moments be translated:i say
that even after April
by God there is no excuse for May

ee cummings
voices to voices,lip to lip by ee cummings http://ping.fm/bEJQU
Clinical encounters as playing to loss aversion: primum non nocere!
Generalised Anxiety Disorder: what is the probability of a white woman dying of cervical cancer before age 40?
"If you can fill the unforgiving minute...."
http://ping.fm/43nWw
Prejudice exists a priori

Thursday, November 05, 2009

Priming
Implementation of the Canadian C-Spine Rule: prospective 12 centre cluster randomised trial http://ping.fm/6m7XP
PLoS Medicine: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False http://ping.fm/xHdAW
RT @tweetmeme BMJ Group blogs: BMJ » Blog Archive » Richard Smith: The beginning of the end for impact factors and j... http://bit.ly/1zrwMa
Can You Pay Off a Sleep Debt by Sleeping Late on Weekends? http://ping.fm/Q9Wqy?i=4e6fe72364823431d6c8b4d27562a2eb
In search of consistency
"Writing is a practice"