Fulminant dengue myocarditis masquerading as acute myocardial infarction.
“Dengue fever is manifested by a sudden onset of fever (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fever), with severe headache, myalgias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myalgia), arthralgias (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthralgia) and characteristic bright red petechia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petechia). The exact incidence and pathophysiological mechanism of dengue myocarditis remain obscure, but most of these cases are self-limiting. Fatal dengue myocarditis is a very rare complication of dengue fever. The non-specific symptoms and signs of dengue myocarditis make early diagnosis difficult. A 25-year-old Indian male, suffered from fulminant dengue myocarditis, presented to a our hospital with symptoms and electrocardiographic features mimicking acute myocardial infarction. Unfortunately, the patient succumbed before the dengue serology results were available.”
Thanks to Oldcola for today’s ROFL!
Texting decreases the time to treatment for genital Chlamydia trachomatis infection.
“OBJECTIVE: To assess the effectiveness of a text message result service within an inner London sexual health clinic…. …CONCLUSION: Patients with genital CT infection are diagnosed and receive treatment sooner since the introduction of a text message result service. The introduction of this service has resulted in a significant saving in staff time.”
“Falling coconuts can cause injury to the head, back, and shoulders. A 4-year review of trauma admissions to the Provincial Hospital, Alotau, Milne Bay Province, Papua New Guinea, revealed that 2.5% of such admissions were due to being struck by falling coconuts. Since mature coconut palms may have a height of 24 up to 35 meters and an unhusked coconut may weigh 1 to 4 kg, blows to the head of a force exceeding 1 metric ton are possible. Four patients with head injuries due to falling coconuts are described. Two required craniotomy. Two others died instantly in the village after being struck by dropping nuts.”
Thanks to Ian for today’s ROFL!
No one is quite sure what caused bizarre 600-mile-long tubular clouds to form above a small Australian town. But because the fluffy white rods, known as Morning Glory clouds, can move up to 35 miles per hour, they can pose a problem for airplanes flying through the area.
Wired reports:
A small number of pilots and tourists travel there each year in hopes of “cloud surfing” with the mysterious phenomenon.
Similar tubular shaped clouds called roll clouds appear in various places around the globe. But nobody has yet figured out what causes the Morning Glory clouds.
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Image courtesy of Mick Petroff
“Although a common pain response, whether swearing alters individuals’ experience of pain has not been investigated. This study investigated whether swearing affects cold-pressor pain tolerance (the ability to withstand immersing the hand in icy water), pain perception and heart rate. In a repeated measures design, pain outcomes were assessed in participants asked to repeat a swear word versus a neutral word… …Swearing increased pain tolerance, increased heart rate and decreased perceived pain compared with not swearing.”
Thanks to Helen for today’s ROFL!
Even the most casual readers of science news may have come across a few phrases that get used over and over, to the point of becoming extremely annoying.
So Wired took it upon itself to compile an entertaining list of the top five worst science cliches—and called DISCOVER out for employing one of the dreaded phrases (along with pretty much every other science publication).
Here’s a few excerpted entries from the list, compiled by Betsy Mason:
1. Holy Grail: To me, this is the mother of all bad science clichés, the worst offender. And I recently learned I have back up on this opinion from the venerable journal Nature which has literally banned scientists from putting holy grails in their papers.
2. Silver Bullet: No more silver bullets, please. Apparently they are really only meant for werewolves, witches and the occasional monster…. Things that are not silver or magic bullets: antioxidants, carbon capture, disk encryption, GM crops, vitamins, and carbon dioxide mosquito traps.
3. Shedding Light: Why must everything always be shedding light on something else? In addition to the light I shed on dark matter in 2006, light has also been shed on virtually everything you can think of… Googling “shed* light” + science OR scientists OR research returns 6.66 million hits.
Thanks, Wired, for shedding some light on the shifting paradigm of science journalism, and filling in that missing link on our never-ending quest for media’s holy grail. Now all our field needs is a silver bullet (or a revenue model that actually works).
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Image: flickr / moria
Is our universe just one of many parallel worlds? Do these universes operate under different laws of physics? Are we actually living inside a computer simulation? All of these questions will be discussed in a luminary-packed panel discussion coming up this Saturday at the second annual World Science Festival, which DISCOVERmagazine.com will be covering throughout the week. The panel, titled Infinite Worlds, is already sold out, but we happen to have two of the highly sought-after tickets, and we’re going to give them away through our first Twitter-based contest.
This Tweepstakes is called The Multiverse in 120 Characters or Less—it’s the Twitter-twin of our video contest series Science in Two Minutes or Less, which challenges people to create videos that explain the Big Ideas in science in no more than 120 seconds. (The first contest was String Theory in Two Minutes or Less, and the submission period for the most recent contest, Evolution in Two Minutes or Less, just ended.) The Twitter version is much the same: Your job is to send us a tweet explaining the workings and/or significance of the multiverse theory in no more than 120 characters. Why 120 characters if a tweet can use up to 140? Well, to designate your tweet as a contest entry, you must begin it with a 20-character string—sci120 @DiscoverMag (include a space after the g)—leaving you with 120 little opportunities for brilliance. Entries can be straightforward scientific, poetic, philosophical, creative, didactic, funny, or otherwise.
Whoever sends the best explanation of the multiverse theory (judged by our entirely subjective, deeply secretive process) by midnight tomorrow, EDT, wins the contest and the two tickets. The event is in downtown Manhattan on Saturday at 8pm and despite its subject, we will not be able to use multiverse magic to teleport people there. But we encourage you to enter even if you don’t live close by—you’ll get bragging rights plus a chance to give a great present to a friend who lives in the New York area.
For more context on the multiverse, see our recent story Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: the Multiverse Theory. If you have any questions on the contest, email webmaster@discovermagazine.com. Good luck, and remember to use this 20-character string at the beginning of your tweet/contest entry: sci120 @DiscoverMag (including a space after the g).
Doctors and zombies find themselves on the opposite sides of most issues, so the world would be well advised to take notice of one question where they entirely agree: We need more organs.
More than a hundred thousand people are on the waiting list for organ donations, and 19 die each day because they can’t get an organ in time. Fortunately, scientists are working hard to find ways to create them—including growing them in the lab. Others are using polymers to help regenerate key tissues, and researchers have even tried growing organs in a healthy person’s body. Now, the latest buzz over organ generation comes from Japan, where scientists claim they have grown a spare chimpanzee pancreas in a sheep’s underbelly.
To grow the organ, Jichi Medical University’s Yutaka Hanazono used “sheep-based chimera organ technology,” a method that implanted chimp stem cells in a sheep to grow an extra pancreas. Hanazono claims this is a much better way to grow organs than trying to grow them in test tubes.
Scientists say it’s going to be a good 10 years or so before they will take human stem cells and grow human livers, hearts, pancreases and skin. For now, the extra pancreas could only really help out a diabetic chimp.
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Image: flickr/ Alvaro Herreras
Get the full story behind the caption in the 80beats post, No Tarzans Here: Earliest Humans Quickly Lost Their Ape-Like Climbing Abilities.
Readers: Think you have what it takes to make a LOLScienz cat? Send your best efforts (on any science-y topic) to estrickland@discovermagazine.com.
Photo: flickr / Robert Couse-Baker
