Shout Outs

Updated 3/2017-- photos and all links (except to my own posts) removed as many no longer active. 

Kim, Emergiblog, is the host for this week’s Angry Birds issue of Grand Rounds! You can read this week’s edition here (photo credit).

Welcome to the Angry Birds edition of that weekly compendium of medical blogosphere goodness, Grand Rounds! I’ve chosen my addiction du jour, Angry Birds, as the theme for my 7th turn as host.

For those who are not familiar, Angry Birds is a game in which Green Pigs steal Bird eggs, causing the Birds to become angry, start screeching and begin catapulting themselves from sling shots in an attempt to destroy the Pigs, who house themselves in various structures and giggle at the Birds.

Got it?
Okay then! Let’s get started!  ………..

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Last Tuesday @EvidenceMatters alerted me via twitter to a panel discussion regarding Vitamin D “Vigorous panel talk: Boosting Vit D - Not enough or too much? Liveblog: http://bit.ly/gL9JuX Video: http://bit.ly”

The webcast of the panel discussion can be viewed here.

The consensus report:  Dietary Reference Intakes for Calcium and Vitamin D

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I caught part of this great  @radiorounds episode (#509) this past Sunday afternoon.  The episode kicked off “Donate Life” month and  focused on the topics of organ donation and the organ shortage crisis.  It aired live on April 3 and will be available on April 5 on their iTunes page!   

The featured guests included:

• Dr. William K. Rundell, Director of Transplant Surgery at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio and Clinical Professor of Surgery at the Wright State Univ. Boonshoft School of Medicine

• Dr. John Donnelly, Asst. Professor of Family Medicine at the Wright State Univ. Boonshoft School of Medicine… and a pancreas transplant recipient

• Dr. Alex Tabarrok, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and co-author of the economics blog Marginal Revolution

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Victoria (@vpmedical), Beyond the Bedside, wrote her own post in response to mine:    Hand Transplant vs. Prosthesis

…. As a life care planning expert in amputation injury and limb loss, I find hand transplantation somewhat disturbing.  I can appreciate the technology and biological advances that have allowed transplantation to occur. …….

One need only to review the case of Mr. Jeff Kepner, a bilateral hand transplant patient, to understand the concerns of such a procedure.  One year after his transplant he still regretted his life changing decision. In his words……….

Be sure to read the comment from Wolf on my post.  It is very insightful.

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Engadget had an article by Christopher Trout yesterday:  Bionic eye closer to human trials with invention of implantable microchip

We've had our eye -- so to speak -- on Bionic Vision Australia (BVA) for sometime, and with the invention of a new implantable microchip it's coming ever closer to getting the bionic eye working on real-deal humans. The tiny chip measures five square millimeters and packs 98 electrodes that stimulate retinal cells to restore vision. ……...

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A lovely essay on the origin of how human hair wigs are sourced, created and distributed by Julia Sherman:  She Goes Covered

Following the global hair trade, from the braid-laden Peruvian highlands to the sheitel machers of Borough Park.

I.     In the fall of 2009, Helene Rosen, her husband, Yoni, and eight of their eleven children moved from Baltimore to Cusco, Peru, to harvest human hair.1 Helene is a forty-four-year-old Orthodox Jew and self-proclaimed “master sheitel designer” who began making wigs fifteen years ago, for ten dollars an hour; her custom hairpieces now sell for up to two thousand. “You can bring me any wig,” she said this past winter, sitting at the table in her spare dining room in Cusco, “and I can tell you how old it is, how much it has been worn, and if it has ever been repaired. I can tell you everything about it.”   ……….

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Arkansas Literary Festival begins this Thursday (April 7-13).  One of the authors this year is the son of a long time friend (from college days, a fellow physics grad who now works for Lockheed Martin in laser research). 

Benjamin Hale is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he received a Provost's Fellowship to complete his novel, which went on to win a Michener-Copernicus Award. He has been a night shift baker, security guard, trompe l'oeil painter, pizza deliverer, cartoonist, illustrator, and technical writer. He grew up in Colorado and now lives in New York. The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore is his first novel.

To visit Benjamin Hale's website, click here