My Body Could Feed 16 Cannibals

While searching for something completely different, I ran across this site, which gives one yet another reason to eat less and exercise more.

As I've blogged before, radiology is a pretty darned sedentary job. The "exercise more" part is definitely going to have to come outside of work.

It would be really nice to starve at least one of those sixteen cannibals by summertime...

Linux Developer Gets Laid -- Can Radiologists be Far Behind?

Going into radiology is not widely considered to be an effective mating strategy. Anyone who thinks working around magnetic resonance imaging also makes you a magnet for babes or hunks is soon sadly disabused. However, this story gives some hope to geeks of all ilk.

The secret ninja technique used by this Linux dude is something that radiologists might also consider (Boards-ready senior residents, I'm talking to you). It would seem that a major step forward in getting laid is getting a life (even a small one).

Hmmm, it's worth a try...

(Via Fake Steve Jobs.)

Knee MR Fellowship, According to Google

Last month, I posted about the travails of searching for medical images on the web, in Desperately Seeking Supraspinatus.

A few nights ago, I searched Google Images for the following phrase: "knee mr". At that particular time, the very topmost hit was the image below:

All Ken needed was a Drag Queen on his knee - Mr. Gay Cork 2008

According to the subtitle of the image, I got exactly what I asked for: "knee" followed by "mr".

Somehow this wasn't quite what I had in mind for my lecture. :-)

Live-Blogging the AUR Meeting

Tuesday, March 25

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm spending this week in Seattle at the annual meeting of the Association of University Radiologists. After the first few sessions, my brain is beginning to disintegrate.

To remain conscious through some of the sessions, I thought I would live-blog the meeting via my iPhone in the comment section of this post.

As an exercise, I will try to keep the bulk of the posts to exactly 6 words, as in my earlier post on Six-Word Memoirs.

Six-Word Memoirs

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer recently challenged its readers to write their life story in just six words. The results of this challenge are now online.

My favorite is by Cheryl Stumbo,

one of five women wounded in a July 2006 shooting at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle -- a shooting that claimed the life of annual-campaign director Pamela Waechter.

Her memoir:

Bullies keep trying; I thrive anyway.

I also liked Doug Bradeen's

Raised daughters. Still don't understand women.

John Imhoff's

Now playing. Held over. Ends soon.

and Anne Whitacre's

Great jobs; good dogs; mediocre men.

The masthead for this blog appears to have answered this challenge on its own, while my back was turned:

Shedding invisible light on medical imaging.

Six-word comments would be welcome.

To "Glow" Where No One Has Gone Before

I didn't make up the title of this post -- it's from an article on the Medscape site called: To "Glow" Where No One Has Gone Before: The Risk for Radiation to Space Exploration.

If you happen to be a physician, you can actually earn 0.75 CME credits after reading this article. Interestingly enough, the legal disclaimer for physicians includes the following morsel of text:

These materials may discuss therapeutic products that have not been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and off-label uses of approved products.

Hmmm.... medical care in space? Off label? You think?

Anyway.

Despite this generic, mealy-mouthed caveat, the article itself is well-written and informative. It gives a very nice discussion of the issues you may face on your next trip to the moon.

For one thing, I hadn't been aware of the "great solar storm" of August 4, 1972. Fortunately, this storm occurred between the last 2 Apollo lunar landing missions. If it had hit while we had folks on the moon, they would have received a rather large, and possibly lethal dose of radiation. Yikes!

Of course, radiation from space affects folks who fly much lower than astronauts. At the altitudes used by commercial flights, one receives radiation from space that would normally be absorbed by the atmosphere. For example, 3 round-trip flights from LA to NY roughly equal the dose from one medical chest X-ray. I've know for years about this increased dose from high altitude flight, but had not given much thought to the further increase in exposure at the earth's poles.

Solar particle events (SPEs) are primarily responsible for generating high-energy proton emissions from the sun during solar storms.

The earth's magnetosphere tends to protect most objects in low earth orbits, but this effect has its minimum at the poles. I had no idea that

...airlines routinely work around the impact of SPEs (solar particle events) on polar flight trajectories...

Eek. A polar flight trajectory would describe any number of my flights to Europe. Who knew that the airlines are already factoring in space weather along with the much more prosaic terrestrial weather we expect!

Another interesting quote from this article:

Is there a risk to the central nervous system and brain from exposure to heavy ions at the level that would occur during long missions into deep space? In other words, to quote Derek I. Lowenstein of Brookhaven National Laboratory, "If every neuron in your brain gets hit, do you come back being a blithering idiot, or not?

NASA appears to be hard at work studying the effects of long-term radiation in space. For example:

"Fred" the Phantom Torso -- "part-dummy, part dosimeter-imbedded torso [that] is a mock-up of a human's upper body, minus a set of arms" -- was flown to the ISS and set up in Node 2 (the attachment point for the US Laboratory). Its purpose: to yield a more accurate portrait of human radiation exposure in the station.

Thanks for taking one for the team, "Fred" -- if that is your real name.

Commercial space travel is still a bit pricey for my pocketbook. Thus, the bottom line for me is pretty simple: don't log an excessive number of polar flights. Chances are that my travel budget (and increasing gas prices) will help to keep that under control as well.

Off to the AUR Meeting in Seattle

Postings may be infrequent here for the next week.

The Samurai Radiologist will head for the Upper North Left for a week of feasting, chest-beating and muted glory at the annual meeting of the Association of University Radiologists.

Academic radiologists of all ilk will huddle together around the fire, tell their tales, perform arcane rituals, swap trade goods and propitiate the gods for another year of adequacy (plenty would be nice, but is pretty unrealistic).  

Perhaps some of the tales gathered there will be worthy of retelling here.