ZiyadMD - The Blog

These petri dishes are growing bacteria harvested from the belly buttons of scientists, journalists, and bloggers at the 2011 ScienceOnline Conference. It’s all part of Belly Button Biodiversity, a project of researchers from North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. Their goal: Introduce humans to the wildlife that’s growing on us and in us. Their next sampling event — aka, your chance to see what’s growing in your belly button — is February 12, at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Lightning dances in Shinmoedake’s volcanic plume, the eruption having already led Japanese authorities to call on those living nearby to evacuate. Seen from Kirishima city, the light shows last only for a few moments, but the ash and rocks fall relentlessly between the prefectures of Miyazaki and Kagoshima. One of Kirishima’s many calderas, Shinmoedake is 4,662 feet tall.

Read more at: Boing Boing

This site has, not only some amazing photographs, but a vivid perspective of the protesters in Egypt. They contain short details for each photograph. 

Check it out at: TotallyCoolPix

While we’re always using our brains, we’re not necessarily doing much to keep them in good shape. Here are the top ten sites and tools to train your brain and exercise your mental muscles.

Read More →

I think it happens to all medical students. When we start, we are so excited to be a part of things, so happy and grateful just to be present in the health care world, we don’t care at all that we are the lowest of the low in the hospital. We’re happy to do the most menial of scut work because, to us, we are helping in the care of the patient. And it is not that we were wrong, it’s just that we didn’t really understand just how far we had to go.

But now, at least for me, things are different. Everything changed when I came down with a particular kind of problem: Long White Coat Envy.

I had a similar condition once. It was the Third Year Envy or, more specifically, the People Who Had Already Passed Step 1 Envy. Studying in the medical library, I would gaze longingly at their copies of First Aid for the Wards and sneak peeks at them as if they were the most brilliant and talented bunch and I was not worthy to be in their presence. Being on the other side of that, I know that crossing that particular hurdle has nothing to do with brilliance or ability, unless you count the ability to cram for four weeks straight as a special talent. It’s mostly about being too stubborn to drop out of school.

My current affliction plagues me daily. The interns look like royalty to me, what with their deep coat pockets and important sounding pagers. The residents might as well be gods. They seem both omnipotent and omniscient, knowing everything about every patient and swooping in just in time to see me mess something up. And the staff… well, let’s just say that I have done a little bit of worshipping in my time.

Truthfully, I hate wearing white coats, but there is nothing more that I want than to be a part of the Long White Coat Club. That coat denotes an important difference between the student/learner/observer/me and the real doctor/them. The difference is not just in graduating and earning a degree in medicine, but it is a public acceptance into the professional medical community. This is a future physician’s biggest and most career-defining moment, a culmination of everything accomplished or failed to achieve to date. This is the time where emotionally powerful music should be playing in the background at all times to emphasize the gravity of the situation.

In order to do such a seemingly impossible thing as join the ranks of a residency program, I and the other fourth year medical students have to go through the infamous process that we all know and loathe: THE MATCH.

— Reblogged from Katie McHugh

For the last week or two, all I’ve been able to see on various social networks – Twitter, Facebook, blogs – is the constant influx of posts relating to people who are worried their zodiac sign has changed. Or not. Or something along the lines of commenting on the ‘fact’ that there is now a thirteenth zodiac sign - Ophiuchus.

Except, funnily enough, there isn’t. Those bothering to skim articles with the title ‘New Zodiac Signs?’ should probably read to the end, where various experts of Western astrology say that Ophiuchus and the change in signs does not apply to the Western Zodiac as it is not based on the constellations. It uses the ‘tropical’ system of calculating signs, not the ‘sidereal’ – so there is no Ophiuchus.

What annoys me is that nobody seems to know about that part. People enjoy getting emotional about the prospect of having a change in their signs. Whether this emotion is excitement or, more commonly, panic and dismay at the purported change in identity, it annoys me.

Firstly, it is based on an erroneous assumption, as zodiac signs have not changed. So it makes me feel like the person going “OMG I’M A TAURUS NOW GUYZZ” is not someone who cares to find out about facts.

Secondly, the idea of an identity crisis being brought about by such a minor change is ridiculous. I will exclude those who believe strongly in horoscopes as for them this might not seem like a minor change. However, for those who once in a while glance at the Astrology section in the newspaper, I find it silly to be so confused by glancing at another vague horoscope.

If the new Zodiac sign were a fact, I would have been an Ophiuchus. That doesn’t inspire me to be immediately mournful that I’m not a Cancer or write tweets and status updates informing the world of this fact. Sure, I might slightly regret not being a sign that seemed a lot like me and that I’ve grown to identify with (I do enjoy reading horoscopes), but it won’t change my life. People seem to think it should, which is what I have a beef with.

Most websites want to get you to take an action: click, watch, share, tweet, check in, they implore.

Alex Tew, CEO of Popjam, has created a site, Do Nothing for Two Minutes, that challenges you to do absolutely nothing, for two whole minutes.

The new site shows a photograph of the ocean at sunset and plays the sound of waves crashing on a beach. “Just relax and listen to the waves,” it instructs. “Don’t touch your mouse or keyboard.” If you don’t follow the instructions and begin to fidget, type, scroll, or move your mouse, the two-minute timer resets itself and a red “FAIL” appears on the screen.

Tew told TechCrunch:

I had been thinking how we spend every waking minute of the day with access to an unlimited supply of information, to the point of information overload. i also read somewhere that there is evidence that our brains are being re-wired by the internet, because we get a little dopamine kick every time we check our e-mail or Twitter or Facebook and there’s a new update. So we’re all developing a bit of ADD. which is probably not great in terms of being productive.

..so, think you can do nothing for two minutes? Why not give it a try at ‘Do Nothing for Two Minutes’

Did you know ‘Bath Salts’ are becoming a drug problem? 

I found it hard to believe when I read about the latest trend in drugs this morning, bath salts. That’s right, bath salts. Apparently, the issue has been enough of a problem that several states are seeking to ban their sales.

So what is this stuff? 

Chemically, the stuff is very much like ecstacy. The chemicals in the products that are the culprit of the excitement are mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, the last is also called MDPV. The chemicals are known to cause rapid heart rates, paranoia, hallucinations, and suicidal thoughts.

One man, Neil Brown, started cutting himself on the chest, abdomen, and arms. He survived this incident, but others haven’t been so lucky after snorting, injecting or smoking powders with such innocuous-sounding names as Ivory Wave, Red Dove and Vanilla Sky.

Read More →

Apparently — I am a cross between a cowboy, and a fake doctor. Which one are you? 

Last week, drunk scientists discovered how to make superconductors run faster when they accidentally spilled wine on an experiment. Often science and serendipity often go hand in hand. Here are more accidental discoveries that changed the world.

Read More →

A professor is giving the first year medical students their first lecture on autopsies, and decides to give them a few basics before starting. 

“You must be capable of two things to do an autopsy. The first thing is that you must have no sense of fear.” 

At this point, the professor sticks his finger into the dead man’s anus, pulls it out, and then licks it. He asks all the students to do the same thing with the corpses in front of them. After a couple of minutes’ silence, they follow through with his disgusting command. 

“The second thing is that you must have an acute sense of observation: How many of you noticed that I stuck my middle finger into the corpse’s anus, but I licked my index finger?” 

(After the class was over, it took the janitor three hours to mop up the vomit.)