Monthly Archives: July 2010

Answer to Case of the Week 55

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Answer: Rhinosporidiosis (infection with Rhinosporidium seeberi)

Congratulations to Anonymous (x 3!), Kenneth, Chris, Victor, and Santoshpath who all got this correct! The keys to the diagnosis is the clinical history (location in nasal mucosa), exposure history (India), and histopathologic features of a polypoid mass containing mature sporangia (large, thick-walled spherical structures) and smaller internal sporangiospores (daughter cells). The sporangia stain with the fungal stains Gomori methenamine silver (GMS) and periodic acid-Schiff (PAS), and may mimic the appearance of similar appearing fungi such as Coccidiodes immitis (as one viewer suggested) and Chrysosporium spp. (the agent of adiaspiromycosis). Myospherulosis, a non-infectious entity, is also in the differential diagnosis. The difference between these entities is in the size of the spherule/sporangia and the internal structures.

This organism was previously considered to be a fungus, but it is now considered to be an aquatic protistan parasite (classified under Mesomycetozoea, which includes parasites of fish and amphibians). Rhinosporidiosis is endemic in India, Sri Lanka, South America, and Africa.

Although the disease most commonly involves the mucosa of the nose, mouth, and conjunctiva, involvement of the skin, ear, genitals, and rectum has also been described. Disseminated infection has been described in 3 individuals.

Thank you all for viewing and writing in!

Arizona Telemedicine Program Receive State Medical Association Award

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Congratulations to Drs. Weinstein and Lopez and their colleagues at teh University of Arizona and Arizona Telemedicine Program. The scale of this program and the number served as part of a public health initiative is an example for other states and universities.

Ronald S. Weinstein, MD, FCAP, director, and Ana Maria López, MD, MPH, FACP, medical director, of the Arizona Telemedicine Program (ATP) at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, have been honored with Distinguished Service Awards by the Arizona Medical Association (ArMA).

 
Distingsvcawards The ArMA Distinguished Service Awards are given to individuals or organizations providing outstanding service to the community individually or collectively.
 
“In the last 15 years, Arizona has seen the development of a robust telemedicine program in our state, and these two physicians have been vital to its development and success,” notes ArMA president Gary R. Figge, MD, who presented the awards on June 4 at the ArMA 2010 President’s Banquet. “The work of these two physicians has indisputably demonstrated their service and dedication to the Arizona community.”
 
Telemedicine is the use of telecommunications technology to provide health-care services to patients who are geographically separated from a physician or other health-care providers. Since Drs. Weinstein and López began their work, the ATP has emerged as one of the largest telemedicine programs in the world and has received numerous national and international awards for its patient services, distance education programs, research and innovations. Patients in 70 communities statewide have received more than one million teleconsultations facilitated by the ATP. This year, 500 hours of continuing medical education and continuing education will be delivered to 34 communities using bi-directional video conferencing.
 
Dr. Weinstein is foundingdirector of the ATP and UA professor of pathology and public health. In 1996, he and Arizona state Rep. Robert “Bob” Burns (now state senate President Burns) established a pilot telemedicine program in Arizona. This initially consisted of eight pilot sites and included the establishment of telemedicine clinics in underserved rural communities, several Indian Health Service hospitals, and at an Arizona State Prison in Yuma. Since then, the ATP has created a large statewide broadband health-care telecommunications network, which it operates, linking dozens of health-care organizations in Arizona for the first time.
 
Dr. Weinstein also has been recognized for his innovations in the fields of pathology and telepathology and for creating a number of innovative education programs and courses. A Massachusetts General Hospital-trained pathologist and Harvard-trained cancer scientist, he served for 32 years as an academic pathology department chairman. While chairman of the Department of Pathology at Rush Medical College in Chicago (1975-1990), he developed robotic telepathology, introduced the word “telepathology” into the English language and authored a stream of scientific papers and books on telepathology. As chair of the Department of Pathology at the UA (1990-2007), he established an international telepathology diagnostic network and validated the diagnostic accuracy of telepathology. He is known as the “father of telepathology” and recently received the Eliphalet Nott Medal from Union College (Schenectady, New York), which recognizes “the perseverance of alumni who have attained great distinction in their field.” Previous Nott Medal Awardees have included a Nobel Laureate and the inventor of the laser. Dr. Weinstein has had a career-long interest in organized medicine and has had many leadership roles. He is past president of five national professional societies, including the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology, the International Society for Urologic Pathology (ISUP) and the American Telemedicine Association (ATA). He has received Distinguished Service Awards from both the ATA and the ISUP. Dr. Weinstein also has been an innovator in other areas. He and Richard A. McNeely, former director of Biomedical Communications at the Arizona Health Sciences Center, co-designed the T-Health amphitheater in Phoenix. The T-Health amphitheater received the 21st Century Achievement Award, Education and Academia, from the Computerworld Honors Program. Dr. Weinstein is the author or co-author of more than 500 scientific articles, book chapters, monographs and published abstracts. A popular teacher, Dr. Weinstein is a recipient of the UA Basic Science Teacher-of-the-Year Lifetime Teaching Award and has been honored at five UA College of Medicine graduation ceremonies.
 
Dr. López is founding medical director for the ATP. She also is associate dean for outreach and multicultural affairs at the UA College of Medicine, UA professor of medicine and pathology, and a member of the Arizona Cancer Center and the UA BIO5 Institute. She serves on the board of directors of University Physicians Healthcare, the non-profit corporation created in 1985 as the medical practice of the physicians of the UA College of Medicine. She also serves as elected governor of the Arizona chapter of the American College of Physicians. In 2005, the National Library of Medicine recognized her as a Local Legend as part of a program highlighting the positive, enduring contributions of women physicians nationally to the health care of their communities.
 
Drs. Weinstein and López have continuously collaborated on developing and managing innovative academic programs since 1990, when Dr. López was chief resident in medicine at University Medical Center.
 
About the Arizona Telemedicine Program
 
Established in 1996, the Arizona Telemedicine Program (ATP) is a large, multidisciplinary, university-based program that provides telemedicine services, distance learning, informatics training and telemedicine technology assessment capabilities to communities throughout Arizona and in neighboring states. A division of the ATP, the Institute for Advanced Telemedicine and Telehealth (T-Health), is housed in the historic Phoenix Union High School building on the campus of the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix. One of the nation’s first regional demonstration learning centers, T-Health incorporates both telemedicine and telehealth – distance learning and health care delivery – using a wide range of technologies, including real-time videoconferencing, electronic transmission of digital medical images and data and the Internet. For more information, visit the website, http://www.telemedicine.arizona.edu
 
About the Arizona Medical Association
 
The Arizona Medical Association is a voluntary membership organization for Arizona physicians. The mission of the Arizona Medical Association is to promote and provide leadership in the art and science of medicine; to preserve and improve the health of all people in Arizona by developing and maintaining the highest standards; to represent the physician and the profession in the public forum; and to defend the freedom and ability of the physician to practice medicine in the best interests of the patient.
 

Sale of Incredible Private Collection of Taxidermy and Oddities, July 16-18 (Today through Sunday), San Francisco, CA

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This just in! Tia, proprietor of the wonderful Case of Curiosities website, is selling off a variety of curiosities from her incredible personal collection (as seen above) today, tomorrow and Sunday in San Fransisco, California. I have seen this woman's collection and, I promise you, it will have your mind reeling in wonder and delight. If I lived in California, I would be there in a flash!

Full details follow:

3 DAY PRIVATE COLLECTION SALE!
?July 16,17,18 (Fri-Sun) 10am-3pm??
3 Phoenix Terrace, San Francisco CA 94133?
Off of Pacific, between Jones & Taylor, last house on right, light blue.
415-563-7705

PLEASE, No early birds, loitering or loud conversation, this is a private street.
Victorian & Edwardian taxidermy (some pets),Outsider taxidermy, osteological and pickled specimens, antique insects, glass display domes, various objects of natural curiosity, antique and vintage medical tools, supplies, prosthetics, images, charts and models.

Artifacts & Ephemera.

Mission/Arts & Crafts/Craftsman furniture, pottery, copper. Early Victorian & Eastlake arm chairs, antique picture frames. Vintage and antique oil paintings & lighting.

Handmade vintage amusement park cabinet, painted wood, shaped like a CLOWN, c.1940’s? Vintage Paint by Number paintings.

Cash or Paypal.
Sorry, no email photos or shipping.

Sign up for my e-newsletter for sale updates and link to photos when available.

You can find out more by visiting A Case of Curiosities by clicking here. Thanks, Ronni, for the photos and the reportage!

Next Tuesday at Observatory! "Morbid Ink: Field Notes on the Human Memorial Tattoo" with Dr. John Troyer

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Morbid Anatomy presents at Observatory next Tuesday, July 20th. Hope to see you there!

Morbid Ink: Field Notes on the Human Memorial Tattoo
An Illustrated lecture with Dr. John Troyer, Deputy Director, Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath
Date: Tuesday July 20th
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

In 1891, Samuel F. O’Reilly of New York, NY patented the first “…electromotor tattooing-machine,” a modern and innovative device that permanently inserted ink into the human skin. O’Reilly’s invention revolutionized tattooing and forever altered the underlying concept behind a human tattoo, i.e., the writing of history on the body. Tattooing of the body most certainly predates the O’Reilly machine (by several centuries) but one kind of human experience remains constant in this history: the memorial tattoo.

Memorial tattooing is, as Marita Sturken discusses the memorialization of the dead, a technology of memory. Yet the tattoo is more than just a representation of the dead. It is a historiographical practice in which the living person seeks to make death intelligible by permanently altering his or her own body. In this way, memorial tattooing not only establishes a new language of intelligibility between the living and the dead, it produces a historical text carried on the historian’s body. A memorial tattoo is an image but it is also (and most importantly) a narrative.

Human tattoos have been described over the centuries as speaking scars and/or the true writing of savages; cut from the body and then collected by Victorian era gentlemen. These intricately inked pieces of skin have been pressed between glass and then hidden away in museum collections, waiting to be re-discovered by the morbidly curious. The history of tattooing is the story of Homo sapiens’ self-invention and unavoidable ends.

Tattoo artists have a popular saying within their profession: Love lasts forever but a tattoo lasts six months longer.

And so too, I will add, does death

Dr. John Troyer is the Death and Dying Practices Associate and RCUK Fellow at the Centre for Death and Society at the University of Bath. He received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society in May 2006. From 2007-2008 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University teaching the cultural studies of science and technology. Within the field of Death Studies, he analyzes the global history of science and technology and its effects on the dead body. He is a co-founder of the Death Reference Desk website and his first book, Technologies of the Human Corpse, will appear in spring 2011.

You can find out more about this presentation here. You can get directions to Observatory--which is next door to the Morbid Anatomy Library (more on that here)--by clicking here. You can find out more about Observatory here, join our mailing list by clicking here, and join us on Facebook by clicking here.

XX at Common Sense Atheism: Harmful or Harmless Fun? | The Intersection

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Several long-time Intersection readers have emailed asking how I feel about being included on a list of "sexy scientists" at Common Sense Atheism. On that thread, someone named "Hansen" noted:
Oh dear, you may be in serious trouble now for placing Sheril Kirshenbaum on that list.
The link leads to Singled Out: My response from March 2009 to the hullabaloo and broader discussion in the science blogosphere after I joined the Discover Network. Blogger Luke Muehlhauser followed up with a second post asking whether he's sexist based on what I wrote back then. [The context on why I composed it could have been clearer.] Initially, I hesitated to get involved because it's an area that has been discussed in detail here already. But Luke took the time to contact me himself and seems polite and genuinely interested in my perspective. I looked back at Common Sense Atheism and the growing discussion that's now over 300 comments. It's mostly a thoughtful discourse and you can follow along here. Since so many people seem to assume they know what I'd say or how I feel, I've decided it's worth weighing in myself. Luke appears to be open-minded, so I will think on this over the weekend. ...


Handbook for Protection Engineers

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Dear ALL

I am a Protection Engineer with 10 years exp. I am planning to prepare a handbook for Protection Engineers. I would like to receive your valuable suggestions and guidence. If you face any problem related to testing & commissioning please share with the solutions. That can be includ