"You live and learn. At any rate, you live." -- Douglas Adams
If you want to see people at their best, all you have to do is step on them. You know how it is when you get elbowed or knocked aside -- if the other person is shocked and apologetic, you limp on, smiling bravely and being big about it. They say, "Pardon me," and you do.
Notice, though, that the pardoning hinges on the other person's recognizing the fault, owning up to it, and asking for forgiveness. That's common with stepping on a person's toes, but far less likely when stepping on a person's time, dignity, or career. What I'm getting to here is "the accidental jerk." The chief culprits are managers, and only recently have I come to admit that I am guilty of being one of them. I think you might be one, too.
What got me thinking about accidental jerkiness was watching a video from the folks at ej4, an online training company out of St. Louis. The creator of that video, Ken Cooper, told me that one of my columns gave him the idea. That might sound like a bit of an accidental insult ("I read your column and thought about jerks"), but it wasn't. Rather, I was writing about executives who decrease productivity, and thus aren't really practicing leadership. What to call what they do, this antileadership? I needed a new word for the art of demotivation and came up with "impedership."
In studies going back to the 1930's, mice and many other species subsisting on a severely calorie-restricted diet have consistently outlived their well-fed peers by as much as 40 percent. But just how a diet verging on the brink of starvation extends lifespan has remained elusive.
Now, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have cracked open the black box of how persistent hunger promotes long life and identified a critical gene that specifically links calorie restriction (CR) to longevity.
"After 72 years of not knowing how calorie restriction works, we finally have genetic evidence to unravel the underlying molecular program required for increased longevity in response to calorie restriction," says Andrew Dillin, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory, who led the study published online in the May 2 issue of Nature.
It would be inhumane to force a pregnant teenager to carry her baby for nine months knowing it would die, the High Court was told today.
The 17-year-old girl, known only as Miss D and from Leinster, is asking judges to allow her to travel to the United Kingdom for an abortion.
The teenager is four months pregnant, and last week she found out the foetus has not formed properly and suffers from anencephaly, meaning a major part of the brain, scalp and skull is missing. The newborn baby will live three days at most.
Miss D has been in the care of the Health Service Executive (HSE) since March and it asked gardaí to step in and prevent her from travelling. The court heard gardaí do not have those powers.
Opening the case, Eoghan Fitzsimons SC, for Miss D, told the court the diagnosis was most distressing for her. He said the HSE's claim that under law she cannot travel would require her to carry the baby full term only for it to die. He said that would subject her to degrading treatment.
Errors in medical care affect 10 percent of patients worldwide, according to the United Nations health agency, which issued a checklist on Wednesday to help doctors and nurses avoid common mistakes.
NEW YORK - Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describe the case of a woman who developed a genital infection after having sexual contact with a military serviceman who had been recently vaccinated against smallpox.
A Chinese company accused of selling contaminated wheat gluten to pet food suppliers in the United States failed to disclose to China's export authorities that it was shipping food or feed to the United States, thereby avoiding having its goods inspected, according to U.S. regulators.
A virulent strain of tuberculosis resistant to most available drugs is surfacing around the globe, raising fears of a pandemic that could devastate efforts to contain TB and prove deadly to people with immune-deficiency diseases such as HIV-AIDS.
UPIThu, 03 May 2007 14:11 UTC
U.S. researchers have determined later-life diseases resulting from fetal and infant toxicity have common immune patterns.
JON GAMBRELL
APThu, 03 May 2007 10:18 UTC
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - The discovery of lead in the fabric of a brand of baby bibs sold at Wal-Mart Stores has resulted in a recall of the items, the company said.
Imagine surgery that could be performed without general anaesthetic, requires hardly any recovery time, and leaves you with no visible scars. The catch: it may also leave a very unpleasant taste in your mouth - along with part of your spleen, prostate or perhaps your gall bladder.
Transgastric surgery, or natural orifice translumenal endosurgery (NOTES), as it is officially known, involves passing flexible surgical tools and a camera in through the patient's mouth to reach the abdominal cavity via an incision made in the stomach lining. Once the operation is over, the surgeon draws any removed tissue back out through the patient's mouth and stitches up the hole in the stomach.
To some it may sound disgusting, to others the prospect of scar-free surgery may sound too good to be true. Either way it's coming. In the past couple of weeks three separate surgical teams say they have carried out NOTES procedures on humans - surgical firsts for both Europe and the US. And doctors in India say they have performed appendectomies through the mouth.
