Digital tools: this is new for me.

Earlier in the week, I participated to a presentation in which we presented the use of a social bookmarking. I didn't really know about it, to be frank, I had never heard of it. And then I learned that it is, in fact, like a favorites page, like you can have on your computer, but online, using websites, like Digg.com. You are just bookmarking your favorite websites on a public site, where everybody can access it. Moreover, you are usually able to create a profile page, so you can add friends, or people sharing (or not) your opinion so you can debate with them, or just talking. One of the major good point with this is that you can access to your "onliner reader" from anywhere, you dont have to be from your computer and it's way easier to share it with students or teachers..

You can see our presentation and ressource document.

But other groups presented different digital tools such as Wikis or RSS Feeds. I learned that a Wiki is not only Wikipedia. A Wiki is a web page in which the people invited to share in it are able to edit and write on the page. This is a good way to interact without losing time in sending e-mails. A person just has to click edit on the page and modify its content. Their ressource pages are accessible.

So far, my activity, student, doesn't really request the use of a social bookmarking but a wiki page is really useful.

Do you see any interest in a social bookmarking?

An old breathing technique could help many people suffering from asthma.

A 58 years old man, David Wiebe live at Woodstock, NY and has a 48-years history of violent asthma, causing him a lot of problems and was treated for 20 years with steroids.

After consulting a doctor for vision problem, he tried to get rid of those so he wouldn't cause more damages to his body. But his trial was badly supported with several terrifying attacks and more and more travels to the emergency. He couldn't stand it and after a couple of years of a constantly reducing quality of life, he was going to go back on steroids so he could breath better.

But last year, he heard about a 50 years old breathing method, the Buteyko method. The Russian doctor Konstantin Buteyko named and developped it in 1952.
After watching a video on Youtube where its procedure and effects were demonstrated, he mimicked it and actually felt lighter and was breathing easier."I could actually feel my airways relax and open," he said. The participants of the video, themselves suffering from a very strong asthma explained that even being difficult to practice, the method reduced their needs of steroids and medication by about 75%.
When David Weibe explain his situation before the use of this technique, it's hard to believe the shape he is now in. He was using his rescue inhaler more than 2o times a day and was " [he] was a mess" he said. He then came to the Buteyko Center USA and then practiced breathing exercises without, or almost, using his inhaler.
After three months, he was taking no more drugs and was using his inhaler once a day.
But the reason of this technique is that Buteyko noticed that during an asthma attack, people panic and breath faster. Hyperventilation is caused by a too fast and too deep breath, and it lowers the level of Carbon Dioxyde in the blood instead of oxygen.
There are two Buteyko practitioners in Woodstock; Sasha and Thomas Yakovlev- Fredricksen which were trained in Moscow by a Buteyko disciple, Andrey Novozhilov.
The main purpose of their two courses of five sessions each is to gradually enable the client to lengthen the time between two actions of breathing.
This study is a new hope for people suffering from violent asthma.

Swine flu: Pregnant women in a safe state, but an alert one for Gaza City

It appears that pregnant women, which are supposed to be the most exposed and vulnerable to the swine flu and its possible complications, would be completely safe if they take a shot, while Gaza city call to a swine flu alert because of the unstopable movement of bacteria and its 1.5 million population squeezed in 360 square kilometers.

In effect, a clinical trial explained on cnn that almost very healthy pregnant women would be carefree about the swine flu. The trial was led by Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and it consisted in injecting a single 15-microgram dose of an H1N1 vaccine and over 100 women, 90% showed a strong immunity response, without apparents side effects.

But what really caught my attention was this swine flu alert in Gaza City, still from CNN. The H1N1 viral movement seems to have no borders line and keep spreading. It already caught Europe without, however, hitting as strongly as here and its road let's think that all the world would suffer from it, and Gaza City hopes for a miracle after declaring the alert state because of its great population, being in a lot of contact to each others. Knowing the actual situation, if Gaza City was to suffer a deadly wave of flu infections, the consequences could be terrible. But will we ever be able to stop the movement of this infection?

Cocaine vaccine.

Yale School of Medicine housing a Study concerning a vaccine against cocaine addiction is my local story for my journalism class. Several websites and newspapers like CNN and the New York Times reported the study. Even though both explained the main concept of the study, apparently led by Dr Thomas Kosten, the CNN article really explained in details the study and answered some of my questions but didn’t fill the reader’s ignorance about Dr Kosten’s identity and job, while the Times’ didn’t say much about the study and was completely devoting his article to Dr Kosten and the many reactions to his study. They simply mentioned something about the use of the antibiotics but no more. And I wanted to learn more about it and I started wondering things, details, deeper information, questions, so that I started preparing an interview. I collected information that I put on my wiki page on bhsjournalism.pbworks.com and made of this page my resource information. Dr Kosten is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. I read more attentively the articles from the newspapers and learned that Dr Bridget Martell, from Yale School of Medicine, was part of this study, and I wanted to know more about her role, and why they actually studied on that. So I contacted her by mail and I asked her, after introducing myself and making clear that my approach was within the framework of the journalism class of my High School, if we could meat or have a brief conversation so I could ask her some questions. She accepted and proposed a brief discussion over the phone, even though I would have preferred to see her. Our first appointment was a disaster. She had a medical emergency and she couldn’t warn me so I waited for four hours after calling three times, waiting for an answer. We finally agreed that it would be too difficult for her to actually take some real time to speak with me, because of the intensity of her job. I sent her a mail including my questions and she will answer those within the week. I’m happy to finally interview her but I’m disappointed because a mail questioning isn’t a real interview. The best thing that could have happened was if I actually had met her but it was impossible.

I am still waiting for her answers so I will be able to share those and my impressions with you. But I would like you to tell me what your impressions and questions are.

By the way, as I did to Dr Martell, I'd like to ask you: Do you think that this study is really relevant?

American and foreign newspapers: do they see the same thing?

This entry is not really related to my topic but it will permit me to go further into my opinion that different newspapers from different doesn't think the same way or that, thought they report the same information, the articles incite readers to react differently. For instance, I want to come back at the Nobel Peace Prize recently awarded to the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Everybody in the world has been kind of shocked by this choice of the comitee to choose this young president. But I can affirm that people doesn't think the same way. The New York Times' article let us believe that the americans are really happy, surely they are, and that they think, rightfully, that he deserved that prize. But however, the French newspaper le Parisien published some comments, which are surely representative of their majority, saying that Barack Obama has been awarded for his promesses and not for his actions. It is their right to express themselves and to remind truely that Obama is doing war on two fronts ( Iraq and Afghanistan ) and is willing to send thousands more troops. I'm only in the capacity to show the french opinion being french myself but I am pretty sure that the spanish's point of view is different too. It would be interesting to see the point of view of the iraqis or afghans. I wouldn't be surprised that being in war they would express their disapprouval but I also think that some people would see a step ahead and a futur of peace with the United States of America, and the world (as promised by Barack Obama).

The Brain Miracle.

Michelle Mack, a 37 years-old woman was found born with only a half of a brain and live her life today normally but doctors and family are still shocked by the extent of the damage. A study of Mack's brain showed that 95% of the cortex is missing and still, she can speaks and walk....This phenomenon is explained by Doctor Jordan Grafman by simply thinking that the right side of the brain has taken over some faculties usually supported by the left side of the brain. It has rewired itself. Michelle has improved by now intellectual functions but still have abstract concepts and is easily los in an unfamiliar environment. Doctor says that she will always have problems but the diagnostic of Grafman and his treatment give Michelle's father, Wally, hope.
Michelle is conscient that she will need assistance for the rest of her life and wanted to talk about her case so that people would understand more persons like her, "normal but with special needs".

As long as you are getting older and growing up, that you're interesting yourself more and more in life, information is more accessible and indispensable, you have to be on the wave to understand the changements in the society and their consequences. Then a regular basis of reading become important and you're surprised to discover that you're enjoying knowing what's happening. You can then express yourself ( like I am doing right know ) and comment ideas that you've heard.



For example, I am more interested in the science / health topic and I read about it, differents article or the sames from different sources..



These sources generally are New York Times or CNN or some french paper like Le Monde, yes french. It's interesting to see how other countries evaluate the importance of some situation...







I read this article from The New York Times and it talked about a study (again) in hospitals which was supposed to prove that some hospitals aren't more " postoperatory deathly" than others. This idea about some hospitals being more dangerous than others are only about reputation on their postoperative complication. During this study from 2005 to 2007 and implicating more than 80,000 persons in about 150 hospitals, the death rates showed some difference in function of the hospitals but that the complication postoperative weren't more elevated in the high-death hospitals but in the low-death ones (24.6% against 26.9%).

This lead to think that the way that a team, in a hospital, reacts or responds to the complication is definitely more important than the the frequency of those.





Speaking of hospitals, children like this 3 years old boy received the first nasal spray swine-flu vaccine on last Tuesday, while the shots are supposed to begin in the following week...

The 50 states of the US already sent orders for the shots, but the officials also start to critic the vaccine by diffusing on radio and websites comments about their concerns. They qualify the vaccine as "untested" and say that the good one would come too late, but Dr Thomas R.Frieden hardly debunked them. "..flu is not a 'mild' illness-it can make you pretty sick, knock you out for a day or two or three. And in rare case, it kills." Conceding that the flu returned faster than a vaccine could be ready, he rejected the suggestions that it is too late.