Monthly Archives: June 2007

Ease of Install: Vista 0, FC6 1

Our new post-doc requested both Vista and Fedora Core on his workstation. I started off with Vista. First, it didn’t see any disks. Then, I provided it with drivers for the RAID controller, and it saw the two volumes. However, it refused to install on either, saying they “weren’t suitable” for Vista. Finally, I had to un-hook the disks from the hardware RAID controller, and hook them straight up to the system board.

Contrast this with Fedora Core 6 installation: it finds both volumes, and installs onto either just fine.

Yet, FC6 is free, Linux is supposedly more difficult to install, and Vista Ultimate costs an arm and a leg.

I am annoyed.

ADDENDUM: The Vista install just hung, hard. Good job guys.

Diagnosis Wenckebach

Okay, so this made the rounds a little while ago, but I’m posting it nonetheless:

Amanda and I had a little bit of a communication difficulty when discussing this video. Apparently in medical terminology, at least for a 4th-year medical student, “Wenckebach” is only heard when referring to intermittent AV-nodal block (as deftly illustrated in the video). On the other hand, experimental electrophysiologists frequently refer to any situation in which one area is activating more rapidly than an adjacent area because of differences in refractory period “Wenckebach rhythm”, or if they’re more precise, “Wenckebach-like rhythm”. Many synonyms are also used.

Below is a video of electrical activation during ischemia, illustrating a Wenckebach-like rhythm.

As you can see in the video, the center of the model is only activated every other beat, while the periphery is activated every beat. This is typically referred to as “2:1 capture” or “Wenckebach-like rhythm”, even though the actual phenomenon has very little to do with a true Wenckebach rhythm, in which the atria are activated more rapidly than the ventricles, with block occurring intermittently at the AV-node. The “Diagnosis Wenckebach” has some cute diagrams and even stadium-wave-like demonstrations of this phenomenon.