I had no idea there are 15 online photo editors; see them compared CNET

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10170333-2.html

Sent from my iPhone

CPT codes for Anesthesia

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dgsprq5_13nxx733cx&hl=en

Search for CPT codes for by procedure name or eponym.

"You'll have to wait, *Sir*"

I love the witty social observation in this article of how flight attendants say 'Sir.'

"The intonation of that “Sir” will be familiar to many of you, a tone peculiar to American airline companies, one in which resentment, superiority, fear, contempt and impatience are coiled into a venomous parody of politeness — a three-letter expletive really — that stands the notion of service on its head and tells the whole dismal story of U.S. carriers in recent years."

Preschool benefits IQ...even years later

I've long wondered if there was any long-term benefit to the expensive pre-school education many of us provide for our kids. Here's evidence from a long term randomized study that it helped even into the teen years.

"...intensive day care and education from 6 months of age until they left to enter first grade.
By age 5, the children in the program averaged an I.Q. of 110, compared with 83 for children in the control group. Even years later in adolescence, those children were still 10 points ahead in I.Q."
from the Op-Ed article
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/opinion/16kristof.html?em

Get more sleep! : Poor Sleep Increases Vulnerability to Colds

Poor sleep increases vulnerability to colds

Arch Intern Med 2009;169:62-7 [Arch Intern Med Abstract]

Sleeping badly makes you tired, but does it make you ill? To find out, researchers recruited 153 healthy volunteers who agreed to be quarantined for five days and inoculated with the cold virus RV-39. Most of them were infected (135/153; 88%), as defined by isolation of the virus from nasal lavage or development of neutralising antibodies. Only 54 (35%) caught a cold with objective symptoms and signs, but the researchers found a significant association between clinical illness and poor sleep in the two weeks before exposure. People who slept less than seven hours a night were particularly susceptible (odds ratio 2.94, 95% CI 1.18 to 7.30, relative to those who slept eight hours or more). So were inefficient sleepers—people who spent less than 92% of their time in bed actually asleep (5.5, 2.08 to 14.48 relative to more than 98% sleep efficiency). The link between catching a cold and poor sleep efficiency was independent of more than a dozen possible confounders, including an unhealthy lifestyle, obesity, and stress. The researchers conclude that poor sleep probably does make people more susceptible to colds.

Can they build a computer faster than the human brain?

A computer that outsmarts the human brain will be built within a few decades, gores the claim.  It's in the 'Did You Know?' video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY&feature=related, about the rapidly expanding pace of technology.  Here's a rational, scientific perspective on that claim from today's New York Times. 

http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/guest-column-computers-vs-brains/

An intriguing discussion of how amazing the brain is - uses 12 watts of power, less than half that of a laptop, and it might be estimated to have a storage capacity of 1 petabyte (1 X 10E19) bytes.  But also, that it works well, makes judgments and has emotions despite having faulty components that don't always fire when they're supposed to.