Friday fun: Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Foods

Spin echo of StarFruit

Science geek website io9 reports on a very unusual use of an MRI:

Over at the blog Inside Insides, Andy Ellison of Boston University Medical School has been throwing the entire produce aisle inside a Philips 3 Tesla MRI, revealing the otherworldly realms that dwell inside common foods. Here’s but a small sampling of his many see-through delicacies, immortalized as GIFs ÔÇö my favorite is the broccoli explosion.

Head on over to Mr. Ellison’s blog for more interesting imaging, including a 3D rendering of broccoli and some?á?áincredibly cool 3D interactive versions of the scans by The Visual MD.

Happy National Taco Day!

If youÔÇÖre in the mood to celebrate a wonderful fake holiday, check out this abc news bit wherein the newscasters wear sombreros and taunt the audience with deliciously unhealthy food and free taco promises.

And if (like me) youÔÇÖre really into the autumn momentum, check out these online recipes for pumpkin tacos: http://www.wearenotmartha.com/2010/09/pumpkin-chicken-tacos/ or http://mommymishmash.com/2010/01/pumpkin-tacos-not-a-typo/.

RefWorks changes for link resolver

If you use the WebBridge Link Resolver to check the availability of the full-text of an article from a citation you have saved in your RefWorks account, please be aware that there is a new requirement in order to show any available resources. You now need to have the PMID (PubMed ID) added to the “PMID” field?á in the citation. There was a change outside of our control that made this necessary in order to see available full-text for the work.

If there is no PMID for the citation, when you click the “LSUHSC-NO Check Full Text” icon you will see a link to check the Library’s catalog for the journal or book as well as a link to export the citation to your RefWorks account.

Another change has been made that will help with this new requirement for linking out of RefWorks: when you choose to export a citation to your RefWorks account from the WebBridge Link Resolver screen, the PMID (if available) will be automatically added to the RefWorks citation:

This post provides more information about using the link resolver in RefWorks. Additionally, more tips are available on the WebBridge Link Resolver LibGuides page.

New Mac wireless and wired instructions

If you’d like to connect your Mac to the LSUHSC wireless or wired network, we’ve just added updated handouts to help you do so.

• Wireless instructions for OS X 10.7 (Lion) and later

• Wired instructions for OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)

We also have tips and walkthroughs for connecting to the network with other operating systems and some mobile devices on the Library’s Wireless Instructions page.

Friday Fun: Study maybe

Via Dr. Bertalan Mesk??’s ScienceRoll blog comes this inspired “Call me maybe”* parody by the University of Maryland School of Medicine 2015.

At 7:15 it’s fairly long for our limited attention span. To just watch the music, skip ahead to 2:08.

*Over 25? Check out the story behind the song?áCall me maybe via Wikipedia

Happy National Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Avast me hearties! In celebration of this wondrous event, hereÔÇÖs an amusing cartoon for your mid-afternoon enjoyment.

If youÔÇÖre interested in learning more about pirate surgeons, try searching for information on the ÔÇ£Father of Sea Surgery,ÔÇØ John Woodall, who authored The SurgeonÔÇÖs Mate. The British Journal of Surgery has a neat article on this very subject.

And for the sake of our other patrons, please try to keep your swashbuckling to a minimum in the Library.

This Month in History: Trading the Mrs. for an M.D.

In honor of those nursing students plowing through history papers this week, here is a little piece of LSU Health Sciences Center history on the role of women in medicine.

Though the word ÔÇ£invasionÔÇØ might connote a hostile takeover or an alien attack, for those who witnessed a new trend in medical student populations post-World War II, ÔÇ£invasionÔÇØ spoke to the influx of females in the medical fieldÔÇönot a case for either the armed forces or Special Agents Mulder and Scully, but certainly an opportunity for marked advances in modern science. This article from the New Orleans States (a newspaper subsumed by the Picayune in 1980) from September 1946 marks an important milestone in our institutionÔÇÖs history as twenty female students enrolled in their first-year of medical school at LSU, surpassing the thirteen of the previous year.

The reasoning behind this onslaught of female M.D. candidates seems to follow on the wake of the recent war: ÔÇ£There is no telling what would have happened to their dreams of a profession if the right man had been attending classes at college with them instead of fighting a war, most of them agreed.ÔÇØ While the availability of Mr. Right may have been postponed, the drive of these women to pursue a medical career (perhaps a less intuitive path according to the social norms of the late 1940s) cannot be denied. Citing the greater freedom and social mobility of the times in addition to the general indifference of their professors and male peers on the growing female presence in the classroom, these women transcend the ÔÇ£vague motivesÔÇØ of the ÔÇ£feminine vogue for wearing a doctorÔÇÖs insigniaÔÇØ to participate within our history.

Perhaps bolstered by the popular figure of Rosie the Riveter, a new class of professional care-givers is subjected to the rigors of a medical education and the horrors of the cadaver lab. One such empowered and notable woman pictured in this piece is Ms. Jean Persons, who would go on to become one of AlaskaÔÇÖs best known pioneer doctors and who published a memoir in 2007: From Dog Sleds to Float Planes: Alaskan Adventures in Medicine. You can read the glowing Amazon reviews here. In a time of tuberculosis and remote citizenship, Dr. Persons ÔÇ£was a petite single woman tackling a job most men would run from,ÔÇØ and so she stands as a measure for all those who follow, a prime example of not only female physicians, but of all LSU Medical School graduates.

Glimpse of the Past is an ongoing project to promote the Louisiana Digital Library effort. This Month in History will present for your reading pleasure a closer look into a newspaper clipping of note from our Digital Collections and articles relating to the LSU Medical School.

New Issue of the Library Bulletin

The latest issue of the LibraryÔÇÖs Newsletter has been released. Archives of the newsletter are also available from 1998 to the present.

New Voting Resources for Academic Medicine Community

The AAMC has a new resource devoted to voting information for the Academic Medicine Community. Watch ?áAAMC President and CEO Darrell G. Kirch, M.D. discuss the importance of voting on?áTuesday, November 6, 2012 below.

Visit the site at?áhttps://www.aamc.org/initiatives/election/?áfor?áinformation for voters to register, request absentee ballots, and create district-specific sample ballots.?á The site includes links to candidate and party Web sites.?á Visitors also can connect with AAMC initiative pages that contain messaging and other resources on the critical issues of funding for graduate medical education and medical research.

CDC Grand Rounds: New Disease Detection

The Centers for Disease Control offers a monthly Public Health Grand Rounds webcast.?á The Tuesday, September 18th broadcast (12-1 pm CDT) is entitled “Explaining the Unexplained: Discovering New Diseases Using Advanced Detection Tools.“?á It is possible to receive continuing education contact hours for participating.

Friday Fun: Naptime for Internal Medicine Residents

A recent study in Academic Medicine?ánot only made available awesome futuristic nap pods (photo, left) to fatigued house staff, but also found that a short mid-day nap can improve?ácognitive functioning and alertness among first-year IM residents.

“In this study, we measured the effect of a brief, mid-day nap during normal duty hours on cognitive functioning and alertness among first-year IM residents. We found that, compared with the resting-but-awake residents, the residents who actually napped experienced fewer attention failures during their work later in the day as determined by a monitor of SEMs. Further, we found that, compared with controls who rested but stayed awake for 20 minutes, residents who had the opportunity to nap for a maximum of 20 minutes demonstrated a faster reaction time and made fewer errors of omission and commission as determined by a validated test of cognitive functioning. These findings suggest that a short, mid-day nap may improve first year residentsÔÇÖ performance during their clinical duties.”

Any parent can tell you that a regularly scheduled nap time makes for happier humans. Now to just equip the staff lounge with some of these pods, throw in some cookies and juice for a post-slumber snack, and medical errors will be a thing of the past, right?

Citation and link to full text:?á
The Effects of a Mid-Day Nap on the Neurocognitive Performance of First-Year Medical Residents: A Controlled Interventional Pilot Study.
Amin MM, Graber M, Ahmad K, Manta D, Hossain S, Belisova Z, Cheney W, Gold MS, Gold AR.
Academic Medicine: 21 August 2012
View in PubMed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22914520

JAMA and AMA titles access problems

Update: as of Wednesday, October 19, the problem has been fixed.

The online back issues of JAMA and all AMA titles (Archives of Neurology, Archives of Internal Medicine, etc.) are currently unavailable. This affects all volumes published before 1998 for all titles on the JAMA Network. This link to the Library’s catalog provides all of the titles affected. In the meantime, we do have the print versions of the affected titles available on the 5th floor of the Library.

HaPI problems with link resolver

With the recent switch to EBSCOhost as our provider for HaPI (Health and Psychosocial Instruments), a complication has popped up: if you click the “LSUHSC-NO Check Full Text” icon you will not find a match for the article. This is occurring because there is a problem with the information sent from HaPI to our WebBridge Link Resolver.

If you click the icon, you will probably see a link to request the article via Interlibrary Loan, even though we may actually have access to that article. The best thing to do at this point will be to search the library’s catalog through the link provided on the link resolver page:

We will update as soon as this problem is resolved. However, if you need any help with this or any other Library resources, please contact us.

Start the Semester with Faculty Publications

There is a new selection faculty publications now on display for the month of September. These articles, authored by LSUHSC-NO researchers, have been added to the display in the LibraryÔÇÖs Reference area (near the Library elevator) on the third floor of the Resource Center Building. These items are also part of the LibraryÔÇÖs Faculty Publications Database.

The Faculty Publications Database includes publications authored by at least one member of the LSUHSC-New Orleans faculty, 1998 ÔÇô present. Access to this database is available to the public. The database is linked from the Library web page?áhere. This page includes a handy link to a?áPDF?áof the monthly bibliography of display articles. To add your faculty publications, or for questions about this database, contact?áKathy Kerdolff.

LSUHSC-NO authors are shown in bold print:

1. England JD, Franklin GM. “Difficult decisions: Managing chronic neuropathic pain with opioids.” Continuum. 2012; 18(1):181-184.

2.?áGee RE. “Preventive services for women under the affordable care act.” Obstetrics & Gynecology. 2012; 120(1):12-14.

3.?áHaque N, Raza A, McGoey R, Boulmay B, Diethelm L, Kantrow S. “Small cell lung cancer: Time to diagnosis and treatment.” Southern Medical Journal. 2012; 105(8):418-423.

4.?áJacob JT, Levet J,Jr, Edwards TA, Dassanayake N, Ketelson H. “Visualizing hydrophobic domains in silicone hydrogel lenses with sudan IV.” Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science. 2012; 53(7):3473-3480.

5.?áSimon LM, Magit AE. “Impact of incision and drainage of infected thyroglossal duct cyst on recurrence after sistrunk procedure.” Archives of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery. 2012; 138(1):20-24.

6.?áSingh G, Kumar A, Sinha N. “Studying significance of apoptosis in mediating tolbutamide-induced teratogenesis in vitro.” Fundamental & Clinical Pharmacology. 2012; 26(4):484-494.

7.?áSterling YM. “Impact of the environment on asthma control.” Journal of Community Health Nursing. 2012; 29(3):143-153.

8.?áMader EC, Jr, Maury JS, Santana-Gould L, Craver RD, El-Abassi R, Segura-Palacios E, Sumner AJ. “Human Rabies with Initial Manifestations that Mimic Acute Brachial Neuritis and Guillain-Barre Syndrome.” Clinical Medicine Insights: Case Reports. 2012; 5: 49-55.

New Medical Student Blog

From the Association of?áAmerican?áMedical Colleges:

Aspiring Docs Blog Features Life of a First-Year Medical Student

The AAMCÔÇÖs Aspiring Docs program recently launched a blog featuring an inside look at the life of a first-year medical student attending Harvard Medical School.?á Aspiring Docs Diaries will be written by Devon Taylor, who received a full scholarship to Harvard Medical School after overcoming significant adversity, including growing up in poverty and dropping out of high school.?á He will blog about his experiences beginning with orientation through the end of his first year.?á The blog offers an inspiring story to help demystify the medical school process and encourage others from similar backgrounds to aspire to careers in medicine.?á To learn more about Taylor and read his posts, visit www.aspiringdocsdiaries.org.