1

New Theories / Re: Could the Covid 19 virus be used as a type of germ warfare?

« on: 16/04/2020 15:06:56 »

it's all incredibly  scary and so devastating..... So many people dead all over the world...it's horrible. I can't stand Trump he scares the wits out of me......and now all this be other crude feels like it's all part of his agenda!

Life ends too soon for us all. Easy to forget. We are not here long. We are a vapor, morning dew and by late morning we're gone. I remember standing on our porch shouting to some kids asking as they rode by on their bikes, who they had for their teacher next year in fourth grade, thinking, "Man, I'm growing up fast. Fourth Grade Baby!" The next dimension is going to be so cool, words can't describe it. Forever and forever.

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The Environment / Re: What causes double rainbows?

« on: 26/05/2019 02:01:16 »

On occasion, you may have seen two rainbows at once. The lower rainbow is the primary rainbow and the higher, fainter, colored arc is the secondary rainbow. The color sequence of the secondary rainbow is opposite to the primary; red is on the inside of the arc and violet on the outside.

When sunlight passes through a triangular glass prism, it separates into the colors of the rainbow. This separation happens because different colors bend, or refract, by different amounts. The shortest (blue and violet) wavelengths refract the most; red light refracts the least.

The separation of colors is referred to as dispersion. Not only prisms but also water drops and ice crystals can cause dispersion. To form a rainbow you need large drops of water, the sun at your back and at the correct angle.

Raindrops act as prisms, bending and reflecting the sunlight that falls on them, just like a crystal hung in a sunny window.

As light enters water, the path it takes changes. How much the direction changes is a function of the color of the light.
You probably noticed that a smooth water surface can act like a mirror and reflect light. If the light beam entering the raindrop reaches the back of the drop at a certain angle, it undergoes a reflection and heads back toward the sun. As the light exits the raindrop and re-enters the air, its path bends an amount that again depends on the color. This bending of the light as it enters and leaves the drop disperses the light of the sun into its spectrum of colors that form the rainbow.
Sometimes the light reflects twice off the back of the raindrop

3

Just Chat! / Re: Do women actually have "Women's intuition"?

« on: 02/12/2018 00:45:31 »

The women selected were linguists, mathematicians, and crossword experts, some held degrees in mathematics, physics and engineering and their logical and lateral thinking was highly valued. Instinct had nothing to do with it. Don’t believe what you see in the films.

I don't doubt this at all. I don't see any gender superiority when it comes to logic and rational thinking.

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Just Chat! / Re: Do women actually have "Women's intuition"?

« on: 01/12/2018 09:02:19 »

We see this with young chimps when they're given toy cars and dolls to play with.

A similar test was shown in a TV programme. Researchers put toys on the ground below a troupe of monkeys, the females selected the dolls, the males were interested in the  mechanical toys eg moving wheels. However, these were adults so it was difficult to decide whether this was learnt behaviour, but there is some evidence that maternal is an instinct in monkeys, but might not be in humans - psychologists refer to drives in humans rather than instincts,  because a drive can be over-ridden.

.i have come to the belief that intuition is primarily a defense that women use as an excape from their inability to utilize logic. altho men may have the intuitive ability, men prefer to use logic to solve problems.

this is a weakness that unfortunately women are unable to overcome, since it serves their interest well; given the desire of men to supress women's unhidden abilities of logical reasoning.

this just my opinion...others might disagree.

Researchers would disagree.
Research and testing consistently show that women are as good as men at logic and are just as intelligent.
One major study at the University of Edinburgh with 500,000 enrollees of which a subset of 2750 women and 2466 men underwent brain scans using MRI, found that women tended to have significantly thicker cortices than men. Thicker cortices have been associated with higher scores on a variety of cognitive and general intelligence tests. Cortical thickness between men tended to vary much more than they did between women, but on average, when tested, there were no significant differences between male and female intelligence; this lines up with previous work looking at sex and IQ tests.

Clearly there are males who need the emotional crutch of believing that women are mentally inferior, but research does not back this up. It is likely that these individuals are more susceptible to confirmation bias and may well choose a less intelligent partner to reinforce their false beliefs.

It is also important to understand what @David Cooper says

intuition comes from practice, and the kinds of things you work on to acquire skills are driven by interests driven partly by genetics.

Intuition is not born of some mindless, inbuilt ability, but is gained by observation, logical deduction and practice. It is an intelligent, learnt response.

One study, which involved imaging the brains of nearly 1,000 adolescents, found that male brains had more connections within hemispheres, whereas female brains were more connected between hemispheres. The results suggest that male brains may be optimized for motor skills (mainly front to back connections), and female brains may be optimized for combining analytical and intuitive thinking - greater cross-brain connections give access to a greater range of data/experience and the ability to interconnect that data/experiences.

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Just Chat! / Re: Will Trump be re-elected?

« on: 27/11/2018 21:57:18 »

Trump's also not what he was.
The cracks are showing as people realise he's not "drained the swamp" or "made America great again".
He can't make good on any of his promises like those.
It may not need a good Democratic  candidate to defeat him.
The irony is amusing there.
He won because he claimed he would change politics, and people wanted change.
If they still want change, and they should, then anyone should beat him.

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Just Chat! / Children's view of the Ocean

« on: 28/10/2018 22:31:07 »

Children writing about the ocean.
The next time you take an oceanography course, you will be totally prepared!
1) An octopus has eight testicles. (Kelly, age 6)
2) Oysters' balls are called pearls. (Jerry, age 6)
3) If you are surrounded by the ocean, you are an island. If you don't have an ocean all round you, you are incontinent. (Mike, age 7)
4) Sharks are ugly and mean, and have big teeth, just like Emily Richardson. She's not my friend any more. (Kylie, age 6)
5) A dolphin breaths through an asshole on the top of its head. (Billy, age
6) My uncle goes out in his boat with 2 other men and a  woman and comes back with crabs. (Millie, age 6)
7) When ships had sails, they used to use the trade winds to cross the ocean. Sometimes when the wind didn't blow the sailors would whistle to make the wind come. My brother said they would have been better off eating beans. (William, age 7)
Mermaids live in the ocean. I like mermaids. They are beautiful and I like their shiny tails, but how on earth do mermaids get pregnant? Like, really?  (Helen, age 6)
9) I'm not going to write about the ocean. My baby brother is always crying,  my Dad keeps yelling at my Mom, and my big sister has just got pregnant,  so I can't think what to write. (Amy, age 6)
10) Some fish are dangerous. Jellyfish can sting. Electric eels can give you a shock. They live in caves under the sea where they plug themselves in to chargers. (Christopher, age 7)
11) When you go swimming in the ocean, it is very cold, and it makes my willy small. (Kevin, age 6)
12) Divers have to be safe when they go under the water. Divers can't go down alone, so they have to go down on each other. (Becky, age
13) On vacation my Mom went water skiing. She fell off when she was going very fast. She says she won't do it again because water fired right up her big fat ass. (Julie, age 7)
14) The ocean is made up of water and fish. Why the fish don't drown I don't know. (Bobby, age 6)
15) My dad was a sailor on the ocean. He knows all about the ocean. What he doesn't know is why he quit being a sailor and married my mom. (James, age 7)

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does grapefruit juice affect beta blockers?

« on: 05/07/2018 14:53:09 »

For clarity, amlodipine is a calcium channel blocker, rather than a beta-blocker...

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: Does grapefruit juice affect beta blockers?

« on: 05/07/2018 11:08:42 »

Grapefruit juice can interfere with drug-delivery ...



https://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm292276.htm

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Physiology & Medicine / Re: How are transcatheter aortic valve replacement - TAVR - procedures carried out?

« on: 11/06/2018 07:59:21 »

When you feel better and able, do please tell us about the procedure, what happened and what it was like. It would be really interesting to hear about it and how they do the procedure.

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Just Chat! / Re: Now that ISIS is defeated, perhaps migrants can return to their homes?

« on: 07/07/2017 21:45:45 »

Indeed; I think that we should be committing significant resources to helping these places to rebuild and resettle people. We should also commit to keeping them safe while things recover, otherwise no one will want to stay, let alone return.

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Just Chat! / Now that ISIS is defeated, perhaps migrants can return to their homes?

« on: 07/07/2017 17:04:30 »

Now that ISIS has been defeated, perhaps the migrants who fled in droves, with rebuilding supports, can return to their homes. Or perhaps after Syria has become stable.

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Just Chat! / Re: Your aged care nurse?

« on: 01/07/2017 11:59:52 »

I want kind, caring and able to listen, along with patience, ability to have meaningful conversation no matter how long or how much you ramble on, and most importantly of all without any qualms about changing adult nappies, me drooling and burping all over.

She works down the road at the frail care that looked after Mom when she was terminal.

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Just Chat! / Re: ‘inhumane treatment’ of pain patients

« on: 30/06/2017 20:03:35 »

If anybody would like to read a story which will break your heart then I recommend reading the following:

The Other Victims of the Opioid Epidemic June 1, 2017, Glod S.A. N Engl J Med 2017; 376:2101-2102
http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMp1702188

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Just Chat! / Re: ‘inhumane treatment’ of pain patients

« on: 30/06/2017 19:36:24 »

If you want to talk about inhumane treatment of pain patients:

My friend, having been diagnosed as having Weigners disease, was told she had 2 years to live.

16 years later, having been inadvertently infected with Hep C 10 years earlier by the hospital conducting her care for all those years, and having been prescribed a steadily increasing dose of opiates for the pain associated with her crumbling facial bones and neck vertebrae - guess what?
NHS brings in a zero tolerance policy regarding long term opiate prescription and during a hospitalization for a minor fall decided to put their Hep C patient into forced opiate withdrawal.

For those of you who are not familiar, a forced opiate withdrawal is life threatening for a Hep C patient.  Withdrawal exacerbates the Hep C.  The exacerbated Hep C causes damage to the liver, and my friend 'the Weigners patient' that was requiring the pain killer was left unable to ingest opiates.

I've never been so angry in all my life.  I printed the Hep C info off the net and gave it to the doctor responsible for the decision who couldn't find enough nurses to put between us before he slunk off.  I daresay he hadn't bothered to read my friends file that had built up over 16 years to require a trolley of it's own...
...but why would a trained doctor put a regular Hep C patient into forced withdrawal from a 16 year opiate prescription anyway?
Based on the fact that a forced withdrawal will exacerbate Hep C and destroy the liver, what benefit could there be in forcing an opiate withdrawal on a Hep C patient?

Never assume that a doctor is intelligent merely because they're a doctor. I know that from an experience with a doctor I once had. She had the audacity to compare what I was taking for chronic pain with her experience taking a low dose Percocet.  My last exchange with a physicians assistant pissed me off big time because she claimed my dose was way too high, even though I've been on and off opiates for 12 years now. Dumb woman!!!

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Just Chat! / Re: ‘inhumane treatment’ of pain patients

« on: 30/06/2017 16:29:10 »

If you want to talk about inhumane treatment of pain patients:

My friend, having been diagnosed as having Weigners disease, was told she had 2 years to live.

16 years later, having been inadvertently infected with Hep C 10 years earlier by the hospital conducting her care for all those years, and having been prescribed a steadily increasing dose of opiates for the pain associated with her crumbling facial bones and neck vertebrae - guess what?
NHS brings in a zero tolerance policy regarding long term opiate prescription and during a hospitalization for a minor fall decided to put their Hep C patient into forced opiate withdrawal.

For those of you who are not familiar, a forced opiate withdrawal is life threatening for a Hep C patient.  Withdrawal exacerbates the Hep C.  The exacerbated Hep C causes damage to the liver, and my friend 'the Weigners patient' that was requiring the pain killer was left unable to ingest opiates.

I've never been so angry in all my life.  I printed the Hep C info off the net and gave it to the doctor responsible for the decision who couldn't find enough nurses to put between us before he slunk off.  I daresay he hadn't bothered to read my friends file that had built up over 16 years to require a trolley of it's own...
...but why would a trained doctor put a regular Hep C patient into forced withdrawal from a 16 year opiate prescription anyway?
Based on the fact that a forced withdrawal will exacerbate Hep C and destroy the liver, what benefit could there be in forcing an opiate withdrawal on a Hep C patient?

16

Just Chat! / Re: ‘inhumane treatment’ of pain patients

« on: 30/06/2017 16:13:03 »

It may also have something to do with $$$$$$$$$$$

Drug testing in the US is a multi-billion dollar industry, and the handful of companies in charge spend an awful lot of money lobbying and contributing to campaigns of politicians (federal, state, and local), with the purpose of increasing compulsory drug testing. A large number of jobs will drug test before hiring, or will have "random" unannounced drug tests of employees. Some high schools in the US have implemented drug tests for their sports teams and clubs (not for deterring use of performance enhancing drugs, but for "keeping the children safe" from recreational drugs)--my understanding is that this has been shown to have no effect on drug use among high-schoolers, but it has deterred drug-using students from being members of sports teams and school orchestras etc. Some states require drug testing for welfare (again, likely not having much effect on drug use, just making users more desperate)

Another unanticipated effect of drug screening is that it pushes people to switch from relatively harmless drugs like cannabis, which can be detected for several weeks after the last use, to more dangerous drugs like alcohol, benzodiazepines, cocaine, and amphetamines, all of which can only be detected within a few days after the last use. (at least by tests of urine or saliva--more expensive hair tests can detect essentially everything that a person has used while the hair was growing)

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Just Chat! / Re: ‘inhumane treatment’ of pain patients

« on: 30/06/2017 15:41:59 »

opiate-cocaine combo is a specific synergistic thing which people are known to indulge in.

What does that have to do with chronic pain patients use of opiates? In any case that doesn't address my question  which is why doctors care about that? I.e. does it mean a lower quality of life than living with no opiates and having the pain?

Besides, a visiting nurse can make sure that the opiates are taken exactly as prescribed.

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Just Chat! / Re: ‘inhumane treatment’ of pain patients

« on: 30/06/2017 15:40:17 »

I have a neighbor with severe chronic pain, who takes large amounts of very powerful opiates every day, and she gets drug tested routinely. But she ascribes this to her Dr. wanting to verify that she is in fact taking the drugs (instead of selling them), not necessarily to screen for other drugs in her system.

Pain contracts require patients to refrain from alcohol and recreational drugs. Violation means being taken off opiates.

Note: All opiates are powerful. Being on a high dose only means that their body has adapted to the lower dose and only a higher dose will work. I does not mean the patient is experiencing euphoria from them or is high. That's from personal experience and my "patients education" in opiates.

I'm concerned that this line of discussion is detracting from the real issue which I wanted to discuss. The refraining of giving opiates to chronic pain patients because a few of them abuse them.

What almost all doctors refuse to understand is that they can always require the opiates be distributed by a visiting nurse who keeps them in a safe and gives you one days worth. Or they can visit in the morning and night and watch you take the extended relief opiates like oxycontin or mscontin. Or even a pain pump.

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Just Chat! / Re: ‘inhumane treatment’ of pain patients

« on: 30/06/2017 15:36:12 »

... why put opiate users on a pain contract requiring urine screening?
Patients are never placed on pain contracts when taking meds like Xanax and you can die from a Xanax overdoes.

opiate-cocaine combo is a specific synergistic thing which opiate-users have been known to indulge in.

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Just Chat! / Re: ‘inhumane treatment’ of pain patients

« on: 30/06/2017 14:31:08 »

I have a neighbor with severe chronic pain, who takes large amounts of very powerful opiates every day, and she gets drug tested routinely. But she ascribes this to her Dr. wanting to verify that she is in fact taking the drugs (instead of selling them), not necessarily to screen for other drugs in her system.