Month: September 2010

Emphysema on CT Significantly Correlated With Mortality

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Click through for the abstract.  There is a link on the page for a PDF version.

CT Scan Findings of Emphysema Predict Mortality in COPD — CHEST

Results: Of the 251 patients, 79 died, with 40 classified as respiratory deaths not involving lung cancer. Univariate Cox analysis revealed that emphysematous change as assessed by CT scan, lung function, age, or BMI were significantly correlated with mortality. Multivariate analysis revealed that emphysematous change as assessed by CT scan had the best association with mortality.

Conclusions: Emphysematous change as assessed by CT scan predicts respiratory mortality in outpatients with various stages of COPD.

Train Your Brain

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Underwriters love stuff like this!

How Your Brain Connects the Future to the Past – Jeff Brown and Mark Fenske – Your Health at Work – Harvard Business Review

In the business world, it’s a distinct advantage to have a brain that anticipates future demands and negotiates them well. Accurate predictions typically translate to success. Being able to envision future scenarios helps foster strategic planning and resist immediate rewards in favor of longer-term gains. The proactive brain flexibly recombines details from past experiences that, by analogy with your current surroundings, help you make sense of where you are, anticipate what will come next, and successfully navigate the transition.

Depression + CHD = Bad

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Medical News: Depression Plus Heart Disease Equal Lethal Combo – in Psychiatry, Depression from MedPage Today

The risk of all-cause mortality was elevated 67% for patients with coronary heart disease (P<0.05) and 2.10 times for those with depressive symptoms (P<0.001) in the long-running Whitehall II study of British civil servants.

But patients who had both conditions had a nearly five-fold risk compared with those who had neither (hazard ratio 4.99, P<0.001), Hermann Nabi, PhD, of the University of Versailles, France, and colleagues reported online in Heart.

Scary Charts of the Day – 09.20.2010

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Number of People Using Google Reader Minimum Once WeeklyNumber of Google Reader Items Read Per Day

Official Google Reader Blog: A welcome and a look back

These charts should be extremely scary especially to folks in the newspaper and media businesses.  If you wanted some hard evidence on consumer preferences for news outlets shifting to the Internet, here you go.  The top chart is the number of people who use Google Reader at least once a week.  The bottom chart is the number of items read on Google Reader.

Personally, we still buy a daily newspaper.

The New US Economy

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Lost Decade for American Income – WSJ.com

For your Scary Charts check out the article link below.

Falling off the American Dream treadmill – Real median U.S. household income falls under $50,000. Poverty rate has grown exponentially since 2000, during the housing bubble.

Or see what Yves Smith is writing about real estate.

Latest Real Estate Time Bomb: Title of Foreclosed Properties Clouded; Wells Fargo Dumping Risk on Hapless Buyers « naked capitalism

Massive Fish Kill Reported in LA

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Houston...we have a problemI know dead fish in the Gulf is not exactly a life mortality risk issue.  Well, not yet.  I am thinking in terms of human consumption.  What if people are eating this seafood thinking that it is safe to eat?  I have also been monitoring sporadic reports of blood chemistry abnormalities in some residents of the Gulf shore region.  No definite conclusions yet, but this may eventually become a mortality risk issue.  Stay tuned.

Massive fish kill reported in Louisiana | The Upshot Yahoo! News – Yahoo! News