Monthly Archives: October 2006

What is preeclampsia?

Preeclampsia was mentioned during a talk I sat in on today. I had heard the term before, but either never knew or forgot what it meant. I just looked it up. According to Wikipedia,

Pre-eclampsia (previously called toxemia) is a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy. It is said to exist when a pregnant woman with gestational hypertension develops proteinuria. Originally, edema was considered part of the syndrome of pre-eclampsia, but presently the former two symptoms are sufficient for a diagnosis of pre-eclampsia.

And in case you’re wondering about proteinurea,

Proteinuria (from protein and urine) means the presence of an excess of serum proteins in the urine.

Edema basically means your tissue is full of (extra) water, and I trust the drug companies have made you aware of the meaning of hypertension.

Article Outline: Internal Cardiac Defibrillation Threshold: Effects of Acute Ischemia by Jones et al.

This was kind of interesting, but it doesn’t show very much. The main conclusion that I got from it was that large regions of coronary occlusion lead to death within 30 minutes, but I don’t think that’s really what they were trying to find or show.

The Cite-U-Like page is here. The rest is below the fold.

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The Centipede

I’ve yet to see a cockroach in our new place, though my roommate Sam has seen one. I have, however, seen two house centipedes. If you read the Wikipedia article (from that link) you’ll find out that they eat all sorts of undesirable house critters, including the aforementioned cockroaches.

They’re basically not dangerous to humans, either.

However, as you can tell from the picture, they’re seriously creepy looking. They drive my instinctual “icky bug — kill!” urge quite strongly. Of course, it’s totally irrational.

Well, one showed up on the wall above my bed this evening. I was not amused. I did not want to kill it both because of the aforementioned benefits, and because of the Karmic* effect of killing. I also didn’t want to sleep under it. So I went over and blew on it. It moved a little (and quite quickly!), but then stayed still. I sat at my computer and read some news, keeping an eye on it. I just wanted it to disappear into a crevice somewhere so I wouldn’t want to kill it.

Out of sight, out of mind.

At some point, it disappeared. I know not where it went. I pulled apart my bed to make sure it wasn’t right behind it, or under the covers, and I am satisfied that it is sufficiently gone, and yet still prowling the house for cockroaches and flies.

* By Karma here I’m referring to the psychological impression that one’s own actions leave on the psyche. This is the Zen sense of Karma

ADDENDUM: The centipede came back. I gave up and froze him with canned air, and flushed him. Apparently they like wet places, so I’m hoping that the freezing didn’t kill him and he has happy hunting in the sewers. I mean that absolutely without sarcasm.

Article Outline: Ischemic Ventricular Fibrillation: The Importance of Being Spontaneous by Ouyang et al.

I outline the bits of papers I find interesting for reference. I’m going to try posting some of these outlines in the hopes that someone finds them useful. It’s very easy for me to export them from FreeMind. The article is Ischemic Ventricular Fibrillation: The Importance of Being Spontaneous(Cite-U-Like) by Ouyang et al.

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