All posts by She Seeks Serene

My Journey of Reimagining Life, Love and Education

Healthcare System: “There’s No Dignity In Hospital Gowns” (BMJ)

From a The BMJ Views and Reviews article by David Oliver (February 5, 2020):

David Oliver There's No Dignity in Hospital Gowns The BMJ February 5 2020Last year the Lancet published a paper on the impact of wearing gowns, surveying 928 adult patients and carrying out structured interviews with 10 patients. Over half (58%) reported wearing the gown despite feeling uncertain that it was a medical necessity. Gown design was considered inadequate, with 61% reporting that they struggled to put it on or required assistance and 67% reporting that it didn’t fit. Most worryingly, 72% felt exposed, 60% felt self-conscious, and 57% felt uncomfortable wearing the gown.

I’ve often wondered why on earth we routinely put so many patients into hospital gowns within minutes of their arrival at hospital.

Sometimes referred to as “dignity gowns,” such dignity as they afford is only in comparison to being stark naked. They don’t come in a wide range of sizes or lengths, and they’re open along the back. You tend to get what you’re given and make do. The effect is to leave patients with lots of exposed flesh, with underwear or buttocks intermittently displayed and a feeling of extreme vulnerability, not to mention being cold if they have no other layers to wear.

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American Classic Cars: “1948 Packard Standard Eight Station Sedan”

1948 Packard Standard Eight Station Sedan Interior Classic DriverPackard Super Eight was the name given to the larger of the two eight-cylinder luxury automobiles produced by the Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan. It shared frames and some body types with the top model Packard Twelve. Following the discontinuation of the Seventeenth Series Packard Twelve after the 1939 model year, a new Super Eight One-Eighty was derived from the Super Eight as the new top car range. The Super Eight was renamed the Packard Super Eight One-Sixty.

Classic Driver logoAfter 1942, Packard concentrated on the new Clipper styling that was developed for an upper-class sedan the previous year. There were Super Clippers and Custom Super Clipper in the One-Sixty and One-Eighty tradition until 1947. After a heavy facelift, the name Clipper was dropped. The most senior Super Eight One-Eighty became the Custom Eight, while its slightly lower-priced sibling, the Super Eight One-Sixty, once again became simply the Super Eight. Clipper Custom Super Eights and Custom Eights were very close relatives to their respective Super models, distinguished outside by the lack of an eggcrate grille and small rear chrome trim moulding under the trunk lid on Supers. In 1949, a new Super Eight Deluxe was added to the line. This car had also the Custom Eight’s eggcrate grille, but not the rear trim.

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From Wikipedia

Suburban Life: As Towns Become Overcrowded, Voters Slow Growth (WSJ)

As more and more Americans move south, Lake Wylie, a suburb of Charlotte, has tripled in size. Now, the town is saying no more. WSJ’s Valerie Bauerlein explains.

Housing Boom In Charlotte Suburbs US Census Bureau WSJLAKE WYLIE, S.C.—This lakefront suburb of Charlotte, N.C., is among the Sunbelt’s strongest magnets for young families.

Since 2000, Lake Wylie has tripled in population to 12,000 on the strength of its good schools, low taxes and proximity to Charlotte’s jobs in the financial and technology sectors. But those schools are filling up, the water system frequently fails under increased demand and 20-mile commutes are stretching to 90 minutes.

Now, the town that grew too fast wants to stop growth.

Read Wall Street Journal article

Future Of Boating: “2020 Serenity 64” Solar-Electric Catamaran

Serenity Yachts will make its U.S. debut at the 2020 Miami International Boat Show at the Miami Marine Stadium. 

Serenity Yachts Serenity 74 All Electric Catamaran 2020

We offer pure electric and hybrid yachts that use solar panels to give you a power catamaran with a virtually endless range. Not only do we strive to eliminate the dependency on fossil fuel, we are also committed to building yachts that cannot be outdated. Instead of relying on current technology that may quickly become obsolete, we have designed many of our systems in a way that makes them easy to upgrade as new and improved technologies become available.

Website

Future Of Driving: Behind The Scenes Look At “Rivian Electric Trucks” (Video)

A behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to build a new kind of car company. Follow the Rivian team out of stealth mode and into the wild as we prepare to launch the world’s first electric adventure vehicles.

Website

Science Podcasts: CRISPR & Immunotherapy, Ice Age Cave Art Dated With Wasp Nests (ScienceMag)

scimag_pc_logo_120_120 (2)On this week’s show, Staff Writer Jennifer Couzin-Frankel joins host Sarah Crespi to talk about Science paper that combines two hot areas of research—CRISPR gene editing and immunotherapy for cancer—and tests it in patients.

Sarah also talks with Damien Finch, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne, about the Kimberly region of Australia and dating its ice age cave paintings using charcoal from nearby wasp nests.

Website

Retro Tech: “Gearbox Automatic Turntable MkII”

GEARBOX AUTOMATIC TURNTABLE MKIIThe Gearbox Automatic has created quite a buzz in the audio world, a plug & play turntable that plugs a gap in the portable turntable sector. It features high-quality components, meaning the sound is astonishing for its price class. This you would expect from Gearbox of course, but it also does things no other turntable has ever done before.

What also sets this turntable apart is the high-fidelity built-in valve phono stage, (the first in the world to have one), which has been designed and tuned for moving magnet cartridges such as the pre-fitted Ortofon OM10. This means that you can plug the turntable straight into any line input and enjoy the warm and open acoustics, right from the box.

Website

Healthcare: Mergers & Profit Strategies Force Many Rural And Smaller Hospitals To Close (Video)

In rural towns across the U.S. hospitals are in crisis. Since 2010, 121 rural hospitals have closed. And, the National Rural Health Association says more than one-third of all rural hospitals in the U.S. are at serious risk of shutting down.

But not all hospitals are losing money. A series of mergers and acquisitions that began in the 1990’s has created massive hospital groups. Many of these hospital consortiums are turning huge profits every year by offering high priced services to well insured patients.

Research: CalTech Scientists Target Cancer Cells With Ultrasound

From a CalTech news article (February 4, 2020):

Ultrasonic-Cancer-Treat-14-50.2e16d0ba.fill-310x200-c100The hope, Lee says, is that ultrasound will kill cancer cells in a specific way that will also engage the immune system and arouse it to attack any cancer cells remaining after the treatment.

A new technique could offer a targeted approach to fighting cancer: low-intensity pulses of ultrasound have been shown to selectively kill cancer cells while leaving normal cells unharmed.

CalTech logoUltrasound waves—sound waves with frequencies higher than humans can hear—have been used as a cancer treatment before, albeit in a broad-brush approach: high-intensity bursts of ultrasound can heat up tissue, killing cancer and normal cells in a target area. Now, scientists and engineers are exploring the use of low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) in an effort to create a more selective treatment.

A study describing the effectiveness of the new approach in cell models was published in Applied Physics Letters on January 7. The researchers behind the work caution that it is still preliminary—it still has not been tested in a live animal let alone in a human, and there remain several key challenges to address—but the results so far are promising.

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