UAlbany E-Zine Training

“…And I did live without a heart.”

Anand — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:44:37 +0000

D’Zhana Simmons had been in the Holtz Children’s Hospital since July where she has had two heart surgeries. Between surgeries, which was about 118 days D’Zhana had no heart.
In the spring of last year, she was diagnosed with an enlarged heart, which meant that it was too weak to pump blood throughout her body. She had to travel from her home in Clinton, S.C to Miami, FL to undergo the surgery that would save her life.
She had her first surgery, but her new heart only stayed with her for two days. The new heart was not working properly and had to be removed. The doctors did something that they never did before; they replaced D’Zhana’s heart with two artificial pumping devices. The devices kept blood pumping through her body until she could have another surgery.
This “is a big deal” according to Dr. Peter Wearden, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Doctors at Holtz Children’s Hospital had to craft new heart chambers to work with the pumps since the pumps are meant to be used with an existing heart.
Some might ask why an artificial hear was not used. Technology has not been developed to use artificial hearts on patients as young as D’Zhana, mostly because these diseases do not occur as frequently with younger patients. What doctors at this hospital have done means that there is now another option for younger patients with severe heart problems. Dr. Marco Ricci, director of pediatric cardiac surgery at the University of Miami said, ” in the past, this situation could have been lethal.”
On October 29, doctors completed D’Zhana’s second heart surgery, and it was a success. “I truly believe it’s a miracle,” said Twolla Anderson, her mother. Doctors say that she would be able to do most things that other teens do but there is a 50 percent chance that she will need a new heart by the time she is 30.
On November 22, D’Zhana turned 15 and celebrated yet another milestone.

Some facts and stats on heart disease among adults.

Breaking records with Ike, Paloma and Gustav

Anand — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:45:14 +0000

In Cuba, huricanes Ike, Paloma and Gustav have caused an estimated $10 billion in damages throught the past few weeks. This has not prevented Cuba from being one of the most successful countries when it comes to tourism.

Cuba has managed to score more than 2 million tourists since 2005, but this year is the first that the country has manged to attract more than 2 million visitors as early as November 14th. The 2-millionth visitor was greeted with slasa dancers, strong mojitos and a red-and-white banner that read “welcome visitors” in five different languages.

Two million visitors this early has marked a 10.7 precent increase in tourism from last year. Even though Americans are not allowed to visit Cuba; Canada, Britain, Italy and Spain are some of the largest sources of visitors.

The tourism industry brought in an estimated $2.2 billion in 2007.

Multimedia news websites

Anand — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 18:07:33 +0000

Websites are rated on a scale from 1 to 5, with 5 being the best and 1 being …. not so good.

The Times Union is a local newspaper of Albany, NY has a website that is in a very progressive transitional phase. There are videos and many images to support their hard news stories, but not so many polls and user-friendly materials promoted there. My personal favorite is the “Night Cam” where the Times Union reporters go out on the town to interact with the people of Albany and promote the night life to the rest of the world. Since there are not too many interactive parts to the website and multimedia material is on the low end, this website gets a 3 out of 5.

CNN.com is loaded with videos, pictures, text, interactive polls and many other user-friendly materials. This website is the perfect example of informative and innovative. It brings the world of news to the 21st century with the videos to depict the articles and polls to assist in understanding news stories. The current poll on the website is the Candidate Polling for the 2008 election between John McCain and Barak Obama.This gets a 4 out of 5.

If there’s a need for interactivity and user-friendliness, the MSNBC is the place to look. Much like CNN.com, MSNBC has videos, pictures, polls and many other forms of interactive news on their website. The fact that the 2008 election is seen in many different ways on their website shows a good amount of dedication to understanding on their website. The only downside to this website is that it will take a long time to load the home page on a low-end computer. The simplicity of the material is very attractive and navigation through their material is a breeze.This website gets a 4.7 out of 5.

Brett Favre listed as questionable against Cardinals

Anand — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:48:54 +0000

Favre dragged down by Tucker

After twisting his ankle on Monday night in the game against San Diego, where the Jets lost 48-29, Favre was listed as questionable on Friday, but is still expected to start against the Arizona Cardinals according to Dennis Waszak’s article. Favre holds a record for starting 256 consecutive games and is at risk of losing that streak if his injury persists. His ankle seemed to hold up in the tight wrapping during practice on Friday and his coach Eric Mangini said “I felt pretty comfortable a few days ago. He hasn’t missed many games in the last however many years.”
Favre practiced in the new fieldhouse for the first time on Friday along with the rest of the team, going through light drills with the other quarterbacks and wide receivers. He was listed as limited at practice yet again for the third day in a row but his limp has decreased significantly since Monday.
The 38-year-old is supported by his coach who stated “We’ll progress as he progresses,” on Saturday.

Helicopter destroys House in Wisconsin

Anand — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 21:32:13 +0000

Early on Sunday morning a helicopter landed on a house a mile from Kenosha Airport in Wisconsin. The two people in the aircraft were both killed while the occupants of the house, 5 in total were completely safe. There was fog at 5:30 a.m., which was when the helicopter crashed, but this was not attributed to the crash. Gary Stielow, a neighbor said “The engine just didn’t sound right, it was sputtering. It was at full power, but it was sputtering real bad. Then you just heard a loud boom.”

After the crash, the family was discovered by Steilow to be safe outside their house, or what was their house and the two people that were in the aircraft were now lying on the floor, dead. The helicopter engine was on fire and the investigation began.

Since the airport’s tower does not open until 7 a.m. the pilot did not file a flight plan. Ed Malinowski, an air safety inspector said that they didn’t think the helicopter had a flight data recorder and that it would take a week to compile a preliminary report of the crash.

In the end there was a safe family, one destroyed house, one destroyed helicopter and two dead people. The unfortunate accident will be open until some questions are answered following further investigation.

Some independent research led me to an interesting study that was done by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). This study concluded that there were a total of 2211 helicopter crashes between 1990 and 2000. The number for the current year is not listed.

Progress for all Mankind

Anand — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:03:42 +0000

Large Hadron Collider

The first thing that comes to mind when one puts physicists in pajamas and some in champagne together is definitely not progress of mankind. This, however was the story on September 10th 2008 when the Large Hadron Collider was successfully tested in Geneva. The $10 billion machine that took 20 years to build successfully accelerated two protons into each other in the 17 mile long tube at CERN. Scientists were excited to see the white flash as the protons collided with each other producing a small explosion similar to the one that is theorized to have created the universe.

Friends and enemies all joined together to celebrate this great success of mankind. The one quote that seems to sum up the entire success of the project came from Robery Aymar, director general of CERN according to the yahoo article. He said “Man has always shown he wants to know where he comes from and where he will go, where the universe comes from and where it will go. So here we’re looking at essential questions for mankind.”

The search for where we came from and where mankind is heading has been lost from the front pages of the modern newspaper. It may seem that the search has been given up because of the tragedies that plague the front pages day by day but this one experiment opens up the books once again and begins to shead more light on our past and possibly the future of mankind.

To look at this experiment as just another success in science is a failure to understand what the article is about. It is not about the success of just the experiment, it is not about CERN and not about the LHC, it is about the overall progress of man. This article was important enough for google to change its logo. Now how large is that?

On a more serious note; this shows that some of the people of the world have not forgotten that the search for where we came from has not ended and that progress may lay in those answers.

Comedy vs. The Classics

Anand — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:39:13 +0000

The Dark Knight

Comedy seems to be taking the place of many of the other popular genres of movies in the box office today. The Dark Knight, the most recent of the Batman movies was released on July 18th of this year and has been the top movie since its release. The more recent Tropic Thunder was released on August 13th and has taken the number one spot in box offices around the world. The Austrailian reports that the comedy starring Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black and many other stars knocked The Dark Knight down to #2 on its release in Austrailia and the U.S.

From my own observation, I’ve noticed that many of these movies have been taking the places of the classically remade movies, such as The Dark Knight. It can mean that people are just looking for a good laugh, or that Tropic Thunder is really a good movie with good actors. The possibilities seem endless. The Dark Knight had been out for a month before Tropic Thunder, which is also a contributing factor to the comedy winning the #1 spot.

The Dark Knight is still known for shattering the open weekend box office with its $155.34 million open. Which can be attributed to many factors, but mostly because its a movie that was much anticipated and had some of its success accredited to the Batman Begins, which was released in 2005.

Comedy seems to be all the rage on campus. Talk about the ‘new Batman movie’ has died down to give way to movies such as Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder and College. The one movie that isn’t on the list of many students is Disaster Movie. A movie that follows behind movies such as Date Movie or any of the Scary Movies. Some trends just seem to die quicker than others.