'Tis the season: more heart sounds.
My latest favorite, since I find the HeartSounds software that came with our book to be pretty irritating to navigate, and non-productive in that you have to hold down the mouse button for as long as you want to hear a sound, is the American College of Cardiology's Heart Songs. Though the CD costs $50-100 (which I'm going to ask the library if they'll purchase), they have a few sample MP3s, each of which are 7-9 minutes long, with lots of explanation, lengthy sound segments, and most importantly, repetition. The quiz that's available on that page is high quality, and though it delays feedback until the end and you can't go back to listen to the ones you missed, the quizzes increase in complexity and thus fit my favorite criteria for learning tools in that they are scaffolded.
Other favorite tutorials/quizzes remain the Cardiology Site and Blaufuss's Heart Sounds Tutorial and Quiz.
We can also finally settle the debate over the 3M tunable bell/diaphragms:
Bell Mode (low-frequency)
For low-frequency sounds, light contact is used on the chestpiece. The diaphragm membrane is contained by a flexible surround that actually suspends it, allowing the membrane to resonate low-frequency sounds.
Diaphragm Mode (high-frequency)
For high-frequency sounds, firm contact pressure is used on the chestpiece. By pressing on the chestpiece, the diaphragm membrane moves inward until it reaches an internal ring. The ring simply restricts the diaphragm membrane's movement. It blocks, or attenuates, low-frequency sound and allows you to hear the higher frequency sounds.
I've been wrong along! Good to know. I still <3 my Littman Cardiology III.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Computing: Using RSS feeds
If you enjoy this blog, you can subscribe to it via RSS, which you can use at Bloglines (where I read my feeds) or any other feed aggregator/reader. This includes most browsers, like Safari or Firefox. Feed aggregation lets you collect all the blogs you read into one site, so you can just check one place to see what's been updated.
Reading feeds means that every time you look at your news reader, it goes out and checks which sites in your list have been updated. If I've posted a new entry, it'll show up as a new entry for you.
Howto:
RSS in Safari
RSS in Firefox
RSS in Internet Explorer, even though you should really be using Firefox
It looks like "My Yahoo" and those types of sites (including Google start page) also let you add and read feeds.
Reading feeds means that every time you look at your news reader, it goes out and checks which sites in your list have been updated. If I've posted a new entry, it'll show up as a new entry for you.
Howto:
RSS in Safari
RSS in Firefox
RSS in Internet Explorer, even though you should really be using Firefox
It looks like "My Yahoo" and those types of sites (including Google start page) also let you add and read feeds.
Midwifery: Bislama!
This weekend a friend shared a book written in Hawaiian Pidgin, which got me thinking about Bislama, the pidgin language spoken in Vanuatu, where our school sends midwifery students for preceptorship. Since I'm hoping to go there myself (... in three years), the weekend before midterms seemed like the perfect time to start learning the language! Thanks to photos from last year's midwifery students, I know that "titi blong mama is mos bes" container for milk. Or that a diaper is a "napkin blong baby."
Pidgins are linguistic mash-ups between native languages and whatever imperialistic language settled on top of them, where the two peoples need to communicate but don't have a common language. In Vanuatu French and English contributed, and Bislama is actually the official national language (as opposed to other places, like Hawaii, where the pidgin/creole is considered more of a "low"/common language). Pidgins have their own grammars apart from the language that contributed the vocabulary. From my few hours of reading, I can confirm that both Hawaiian Pidgin and Bislama have different grammars from English, even though English contributed the bulk of both of their vocabularies. Both are technically creoles, since children learn them as a primary language. Or maybe just Pidgin is a creole. I'm new to this.
Anyway, both languages are fun to read and speak aloud, because they have enough words familiar that they're comprehensible, but they're different enough to trip you up. This is my tendency in almost all the languages I ostensibly speak (French, Dutch, Hebrew), since my comprehension always outstrips my ability to generate speech or be good about grammar. For example, because most word roots are in common with French (via Latin), I can read Spanish in a very limited way but can't string together more than one or two words. Dutch has lots of common roots with English. Likewise, I can understand "Da Jesus Book" with probably 95% accuracy (in no small part thanks to the movie Lilo and Stitch) but I definitely can't speak Bislama. Not yet, anyway!
Pidgins are linguistic mash-ups between native languages and whatever imperialistic language settled on top of them, where the two peoples need to communicate but don't have a common language. In Vanuatu French and English contributed, and Bislama is actually the official national language (as opposed to other places, like Hawaii, where the pidgin/creole is considered more of a "low"/common language). Pidgins have their own grammars apart from the language that contributed the vocabulary. From my few hours of reading, I can confirm that both Hawaiian Pidgin and Bislama have different grammars from English, even though English contributed the bulk of both of their vocabularies. Both are technically creoles, since children learn them as a primary language. Or maybe just Pidgin is a creole. I'm new to this.
Anyway, both languages are fun to read and speak aloud, because they have enough words familiar that they're comprehensible, but they're different enough to trip you up. This is my tendency in almost all the languages I ostensibly speak (French, Dutch, Hebrew), since my comprehension always outstrips my ability to generate speech or be good about grammar. For example, because most word roots are in common with French (via Latin), I can read Spanish in a very limited way but can't string together more than one or two words. Dutch has lots of common roots with English. Likewise, I can understand "Da Jesus Book" with probably 95% accuracy (in no small part thanks to the movie Lilo and Stitch) but I definitely can't speak Bislama. Not yet, anyway!
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Women's Health: Contraception
I was looking around the web for stats on birth control methods (since it seems like all the made-up cases we've been working on this quarter have been using cervical cap -- I know it's just to simplify our case analysis so we don't have to take into account exogenous hormones where it's not relevant, but I was still curious how many women are actually using cervical caps) and found The Well-Timed Period -- the extensive archives can provide fascinating reading for days, if not weeks.
Other excellent blogs/communities discussing birth control, contraception and other salient issues of women's health from the user's perspective include the Livejournal Birth Control community and the Livejournal Vagina Pagina community (check the tags on the left for specific subjects).
Contraception Online has a pretty exhaustive discussion of each method, including natural family planning.
As a disclaimer, I don't know the backgrounds of any of the authors linked to above.
Some more:
- American Family Physician discusses newer methods of contraception and compares them all
- The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals have a wealth of information on both male and female reproductive health, and many documents comparing contraceptive methods.
I still haven't found any stats on how many women are using each method. If you find them, let me know!
Other excellent blogs/communities discussing birth control, contraception and other salient issues of women's health from the user's perspective include the Livejournal Birth Control community and the Livejournal Vagina Pagina community (check the tags on the left for specific subjects).
Contraception Online has a pretty exhaustive discussion of each method, including natural family planning.
As a disclaimer, I don't know the backgrounds of any of the authors linked to above.
Some more:
- American Family Physician discusses newer methods of contraception and compares them all
- The Association of Reproductive Health Professionals have a wealth of information on both male and female reproductive health, and many documents comparing contraceptive methods.
I still haven't found any stats on how many women are using each method. If you find them, let me know!
Embryology: Urogenital development
Female Urogenital Development
Male Urogenital Development
(Originally posted on Pharyngula, and I saw them on The Well-Timed Period.)
YouTube actually has quite a few cool science-related videos stashed away under the giant mountains of bored kids with webcams. This one is my favorite: The Inner Life of the Cell.
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