The Sampson artery is not clearly demonstrated in this picture. Thanks.
Whew, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here. I’m on my Ob/Gyn rotation, so I’ve been researching this question for the last hour or so -What is the Sampson artery? It has come up a lot during pelvic surgeries, and the tales I am told of this mysterious beast are often mutually conflicting.
Here’s what I can tell. It goes by an alias: artery of the round ligament of the uterus. That is probably the most useful thing I’ve learned, since the name helps me remember where it is. The other name is an homage to John A. Sampson, the gynecologist who discovered endometriosis, a disease unrelated to this artery. Other sources indicate it is the anastamoses (connection) of the ovarian and uterine arteries (which come from the anterior branch of the internal iliac). OK, this seems reasonable. Another source indicates it is a branch of the inferior epigastric artery (which comes from the external iliac). What what? Can an artery simultaneously have a different source than the arteries it supposedly anastamoses? Do they all three anastamose here? Is the word anastamose a verb? Wikipedia needs a new editor.
Art Caplan is my hero for the day. He’s a bioethicist at Penn, and one of our professors at the (Perelman) School of Medicine.
You may have heard that during a Republican debate, Michelle Bachmann tried to shame Texas Governor Rick Perry for having signed an executive order requiring school age girls to be vaccinated against HPV, the virus that causes cervical cancer.
She claimed that this was a violation of individual liberties and that there were adverse effects, namely, that the vaccine causes mental retardation.
This is such a patent falsehood that Caplan has called her bluff with a $10,000 wager that Bachmann could not produce a single person who became mentally retarded from the Gardasil vaccine.
He’s agreed to donate the money to a charity of Bachmann’s choice. Good luck, Michelle!
P.S. VACCINATE YOUR CHILDREN. It will save their lives & the lives of tens of thousands of pediatric cancer patients who can’t be vaccinated, and who rely on our herd immunity to prevent them from dying from preventable disease.
Researchers at Penn Med have sent a man’s Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia into full remission by reprogramming his T-cells with modified HIV.
This is truly inspiring research for several reasons
1) It’s great to see wonderful research like this come from Penn.
2) Successfully co-opting one’s immune system to do the dirty work against cancer, and with such success, is a great victory in the battle against cancer. What’s more, using T-cells instead of chemotherapy would drastically improve the side effect profile of cancer treatment.
3) It’s great to see a virus like HIV, that continues to devastate our world, being put to a potentially lifesaving medical purpose.
Google just released flight search. The most noticeable part is the speed – results are instantaneous instead of 10 seconds of watching the Orbitz yard gnome.
The only downside is there is no way to buy tickets with it at the moment – it just links you to the airline website. Still – Check it out.
I have to admit, as much as I admire the Zagat brand, I’ve never been enough of a foodie to dive too deep into the world of their impressively comprehensive restaurant ratings.
With the advent of websites like LivingSocial and Groupon (which once was the target of a Google acquisition), I have started to try restaurants more often.
I’m excited to see how Google will incorporate Zagat ratings into things like Google Maps, Search, and their somewhat nascent coupon site Google Offers (which was started after Groupon turned down their takeover offer).
It’s also for when you’ve lost your Android smartphone. Just like with birth control, if you plan ahead, you can install one of several apps to help you locate, lock, and sound an alarm on your phone when you lose it.
Just like with birth control, this requires some advance planning. But, in the heat of the moment, you just do it – you lose your phone.
If you haven’t planned ahead, Plan B is a great option from Lookout Mobile Security. You can install it from the Android market AFTER your phone has gone missing, and you can use it to track your phone using email and/or text messages from a friend’s phone.
Of course, if you’re the plan ahead type, you might be more interested in the IUD equivalent of mobile security – something you can install now that will always be there to protect you: try Lookout’s regular app.
If you’re the type of person who “loses” a phone under a pile of clothes or in your friend’s car, try Where’s My Droid. It allows you to remotely change your ringer volume so even if its on silent, you can crank the volume to hear your test call. You can also use GPS to locate your phone.
Have you ever lost your Android? Let me know what your experience has been with these or similar apps.
I never quite understood why people call the Atlantic Ocean “the pond,” as in, “the other side of the pond.” There are a few things, other than several thousand miles of ocean, that separate the western world.
America has Hulu & Pandora, and Europe has Spotify.
Spotify is a music web service, but not just any. It’s the type of web service that has nerds across America setting up proxy servers to mask their IP address in order to make it look like they are connecting from Europe – all just to use Spotify. (Unfortunately, I cannot count myself among these particular nerds).
I’ve never had the pleasure of using Spotify, but I’ve heard from many friends (including my sister) how amazing it is. Here are the features I’m looking forward to:
1) Free, Gigantic Library. Spotify has an enormous library of legal and free music.
2) Access Anywhere, including offline. You can stream music from your desktop player at home, the web at the office or at school, or on your smartphone. It even has offline capability.
3) Sharing. You can create playlists that you can then share on facebook or via email. There is even a website (sharemyplaylists.com) dedicated to sharing Spotify playlists.
This feature set sounds like a dream combination of Pandora, Google Music, and iTunes – I can’t wait.
On the downside: I haven’t had a chance to give it a try, but I don’t think there is any way to upload your existing music collection. This would be an excellent feature for those of us who are looking to get started when Spotify comes to the U.S. Sign up today!
Google Maps 5.7 was released today, and Google has added some head-turning features. My personal favorites:
1) Downloadable map areas. One major downside to smartphones is random data blackholes where, among other things, maps won’t load. It might be the network, it might be your phone. Now, who cares? You can download map areas, for example, in the 10 mile radius where you live, or, in the area of your road trip where you’re certain you won’t have a data connection. I’m still waiting to test out how well this works, but offline maps puts a smile on my face. Update: Offline maps is amazingly fast. This will be a great way to navigate my local area.
2) Public Transit navigation. For some time now, Google has mapped bus and subway routes for you in major cities. I’m not sure how anyone navigated unfamiliar public transit systems before this. Even with transit mapping, it’s easy to miss your stop. Now, if you’re in an unfamiliar city – or even just visiting a part of your city that’s new to you, Google will help you navigate while on board public transit. It’ll notify you when your stop is coming up, and it will identify each stop along the way. This is definitely a public transit rider’s new best friend.
Code named “Emerald Sea,” Google+ is going to be the next great thing in social media. It’s a combination of social networking with all of those things that Google released in the past that felt like they should be amazing, but never really quite produced the magic they promised [see, namely, Google's Wave & Buzz].
It has involved hundreds of Google engineers & has an ambitious timeline release. Look forward to these 4 key features.
Circles. Your email chain is old news. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself, just like in real life.
Sparks. The 21st Century version of article clipping. Name your interests; share them with friends. Sparks looks for videos and articles it thinks you’ll like, so when you’re free, there’s always something to watch, read, and share.
Hangouts. a face-to-face social way to spend time online. You can either think of this as taking away from your “real person” time or making your internet time more face-to-face, or both. This one will certainly make you think twice about browsing in your underwear.
Mobile. Of course, the question becomes, how will I be able to use all this while I’m on-the-go. Google’s Answer. Instant Upload & Huddles.
Instant Upload automatically uploads your pictures to the internet. No buttons to press, no memory cards to mess with. And with all these tools to keep your contacts in social order, it’s easy to keep them private or share them with only the right people.
Huddle. This is probably my favorite. Ya know when you’re planning a group trip to the movies – you send one text to your group of friends so they’re all on board. Friend 1 is gonna be late, and wants to see another showing. Friend 2 needs a ride. Friend 3 needs a phone number for Friend 1 cuz her phone got wiped. You’re stuck playing middle man. Huddles makes your mobile conversation a true group convo. It’s sort of like a listserv for text messaging. I can’t wait.
Today, I had the honor of presenting a research article to my first year class at Perelman Penn Med. I was part of a team of four med students, and we presented a so-called “basic science” article: “Interferon-gamma-induced increases in intestinal epithelial macromolecular permeability requires the Src kinase Fyn.” Basic, right?
Fun fact: “basic science” isn’t really basic at all. Rather, it means “pure” science related to fundamental principles. It implies a complete lack of any clinical focus. This means: experiments in petri dishes, not in people.
For me, so-called “basic” science can be a challenge. At first glance, it can appear to be a jumbled sea of letters. But, in fact, these letters represent signaling molecules that control nearly every aspect of our body’s function. Presenting this paper was a great opportunity to challenge myself, but also, to show off an amazing presentation tool: Prezi.
Prezi is a great alternative to Microsoft’s PowerPoint. PowerPoint relies on a linear view and individual slides. Prezi presentations are made in a digital space. When designing your Prezi, you first add content, then you setup a path through your material. You can move in any direction, including forwards and backwards to zoom.
In an academic lecture, this is a great way to explain topics clearly and in a dynamic way: the big picture view is immediately apparent and serves as an introduction and an outline. You can explore each topic in a way that constantly reinforces the big picture.
To see my presentation in Prezi, click here, or have a look below (warning: not for the faint of heart). Keep in mind that this is part 4 of 4.
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