How to Breathe Water...and Not Die?

Newly designed scuba suit allows diving to great depths, all by breathing in ...water?

Posted by Alexandru Nicolae

So a good friend of mine showed me this wonderful link to a news article discussing a new type of scuba suit. This one is quite different and allows the wearer to avoid decompression sickness, more commonly called the bends, when diving to extreme depths by allowing the user to breathe....a liquid?!

Facing Your Mortality

An examination of the chronically-critically ill. How end of life care occurs in a modern US hospital. And how it can teach us about our own mortality. 

Posted by Alexandru Nicolae

This is a 1-hour PBS documentary I stumbled on showing the growing issues faced by medical practitioners dealing with the chronicaly critically ill, and how their constant circling-the-drain health status impacts those around them. 

It's quite hard to watch at times because the patients are going through so much, as are their families, and they have minimal prospects of getting better.

The most interesting quote from the documentary, that these patients are in a state of limbo, a suspended animation, really outlined what modern medicine can do. It can keep people alive almost indefinitely, but is that necessarily an improvement on their quality of life? Millions of questions arise from this, hopefully we have answers one day, someday.

Multiple Sclerosis patient dies after controversial new treatment

A controversial and yet unproven treatment has claimed the life of a Canadian patient suffering from MS.

There has been a lot of buzz recently over a suggested treatment for patients suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS). A recent, yet obscure, research paper published by Zamboni P. et al. (2009) has suggested that multiple sclerosis, a debilitating neurological disease that can leave one with severely impaired movement and motor function, is caused by blocked or impaired veins in the head / neck that lead to problems in blood flow. The paper thus suggests that treatment for MS would be possible by opening up these blocked veins.

An Invisible Killer Substance. How It's Creeping Around In Your Very Own Home.

How a silent killer may be closer to home than you think.

Posted by Alexandru Nicolae

I thought that I would finally post something in depth from my field of study. I've had trouble picking a topic (there are so many interesting ones), but I've finally settled on something that very few people seem to know about, yet may affect hundreds of thousands every year. I'm of course referring to lung cancer. We all know about the dangers of smoking and how it can vastly increase your chances of getting lung cancer, but can any other substances cause lung cancer? Did you know that another less well known substance can cause up to 10% of the reported lung cancer cases every year? Or, and here's the scary part, that you have probably been exposed to it sometime today? Or how about that this chemical is all-natural? In this article, we will take a look at the mysterious and deadly Radon.

New NDM-1 Positive Super Bacteria On the Rise

The growing spread of multi-drug resistant pathogens has many people fearing potential epidemics

Posted by Alexandru Nicolae

It all started when a Swedish-Indian citizen traveled to India for a simple visit. In New Delhi, she developed a urinary tract infection by an antibiotic-resistant pathogen called Klebsiella pneumoniae. This new strain was resistant to a specific type of powerful antibiotic called carbapenem, a drug used as a last resort in fighting especially drug-resistant infections. As of November, 2010, many other forms of bacteria including strains of E-coli have been found to possess the same resistance, and they've appeared in places around the world. As of this date, 8 cases have been reported in Toronto, Canada (a long way from India indeed). How exactly are these bacteria foiling our greatest weapons against them?