Health

iMedix

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iMedix is a website that combines social networking with healthcare to allow patients to find and connect with people facing similar health-related issues as themselves.  Users create profile pages with tags relevant to their interests to inform the site’s search engine, and search results can be voted on in order to help the site learn more about your preferences over time. I signed up for iMedix to see what I think of the site as a health resource. It has a search engine but I prefer using Google. The benefit of iMedix to me seems to be the ability to answers questions, ask questions, and browse and view other’s people’s questions on health topics that you are interested in. It is kind of similar to Yahoo Answers. Users also receive a rating from 0 stars to 5 stars on how … Read more

1.5 Telsa versus 3.0 Telsa MRI

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Over the past few years in an effort to find a source that is causing my constant headache since I had all 4 of my wisdom teeth out I have had some MRI’s done. I became aware earlier this year that the MRI’s had done of my brain before were all on 1.5 Telsa machines. These means that the quality and resolution of the image is not as good. When I learned that there were better scanners that produced images with more quality and resolution, I wanted to have an MRI done on one of these machines. There are actually even better MRI scanners out there up to 11 Telsa. These are currently only used on animals. The FDA has approved human use up to 7.0 Telsa, but clinically you will not find one over 3.0 Telsa. Part of the … Read more

Licorice – Liquorice

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Recently a neurologist I saw told me about adaptogens that can be used to regulate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis or HPA axis. The term adaptogen is used by herbalists to refer to a natural herb product that is proposed to increase the body’s resistance to stress, trauma, anxiety and fatigue. One such adaptogen is licorice. I am sure many of you have had licorice before and likely think of red Twizzlers. Some of you may not like the taste of it that much. This is because it does not contain sugar as in most candies. However, recently I have been eating licorice that is better and tastes better than Twizzlers. I found some australian licorice at World Market. Licorice has a lot of medicinal uses and if you are depressed eating some each day might help you feel better. To learn … Read more

Distributed Computing

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For a class I am currently taking, I am working on a project with a team of other students on distributed computing. For those who do not know what it is I feel that it is a worthwhile endeavor to consider getting involved with. It is a way of connecting thousands of computers and making them work together on a research project. You can volunteer your computer to work for medical projects like cure diseases, study global warming, discover pulsars, and do many other types of scientific research. It requires basically no effort on your part and does not even affect the performance of your computer. All you do is download a software program, install it, and the application runs in the background. How this works is that usually you only use about 10% of your computer processor cycles at … Read more

Narcotics

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What is a Narcotic? A narcotic is an addictive drug that reduces pain, induces sleep and may alter mood or behaviour. In US legal context, narcotic refers to opium, opium derivatives, and their semi-synthetic or fully synthetic substitutes as well as cocaine and coca leaves, which although classified as “narcotics” in the U.S. Drug effects depend heavily on the dose, route of administration, previous exposure to the drug, and the expectation of the user. Aside from their clinical use in the treatment of pain, coughing and acute diarrhea, narcotics produce a general sense of well-being known as euphoria by reducing tension, anxiety, and aggression. Narcotic use is associated with a variety of effects including drowsiness, itching, sleeplessness, inability to concentrate, apathy, lessened physical activity, constriction of the pupils, dilation of the subcutaneous blood vessels causing flushing of the face and … Read more