Topic: Medicine (Page 2)

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๐Ÿ”— Bhopal disaster

๐Ÿ”— Environment ๐Ÿ”— Disaster management ๐Ÿ”— Medicine ๐Ÿ”— Death ๐Ÿ”— Occupational Safety and Health ๐Ÿ”— India ๐Ÿ”— Medicine/Toxicology

The Bhopal disaster, also referred to as the Bhopal gas tragedy, was a gas leak incident on the night of 2โ€“3 December 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. It is considered to be the world's worst industrial disaster. Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas. The highly toxic substance made its way into and around the small towns located near the plant.

Estimates vary on the death toll. The official immediate death toll was 2,259. In 2008, the government of Madhya Pradesh had paid compensation to the family members of 3,787 victims killed in the gas release, and to 574,366 injured victims. A government affidavit in 2006 stated that the leak caused 558,125 injuries, including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries. Others estimate that 8,000 died within two weeks, and another 8,000 or more have since died from gas-related diseases. The cause of the disaster remains under debate. The Indian government and local activists argue that slack management and deferred maintenance created a situation where routine pipe maintenance caused a backflow of water into a MIC tank, triggering the disaster. Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) argues water entered the tank through an act of sabotage.

The owner of the factory, UCIL, was majority owned by UCC, with Indian Government-controlled banks and the Indian public holding a 49.1 percent stake. In 1989, UCC paid $470 million (equivalent to $845ย million in 2018) to settle litigation stemming from the disaster. In 1994, UCC sold its stake in UCIL to Eveready Industries India Limited (EIIL), which subsequently merged with McLeod Russel (India) Ltd. Eveready ended clean-up on the site in 1998, when it terminated its 99-year lease and turned over control of the site to the state government of Madhya Pradesh. Dow Chemical Company purchased UCC in 2001, seventeen years after the disaster.

Civil and criminal cases filed in the United States against UCC and Warren Anderson, UCC CEO at the time of the disaster, were dismissed and redirected to Indian courts on multiple occasions between 1986 and 2012, as the US courts focused on UCIL being a standalone entity of India. Civil and criminal cases were also filed in the District Court of Bhopal, India, involving UCC, UCIL and UCC CEO Anderson. In June 2010, seven Indian nationals who were UCIL employees in 1984, including the former UCIL chairman, were convicted in Bhopal of causing death by negligence and sentenced to two years imprisonment and a fine of about $2,000 each, the maximum punishment allowed by Indian law. All were released on bail shortly after the verdict. An eighth former employee was also convicted, but died before the judgement was passed.

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๐Ÿ”— Cancer Alley

๐Ÿ”— United States ๐Ÿ”— Environment ๐Ÿ”— Medicine ๐Ÿ”— United States/Louisiana

Cancer Alley (French: Allรฉe du Cancer) is the regional nickname given to an 85-mile (137ย km) stretch of land along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, in the River Parishes of Louisiana, which contains over 200 petrochemical plants and refineries. This area accounts for 25% of the petrochemical production in the United States. Environmentalists consider the region a sacrifice zone where rates of cancer caused by air pollution exceed the federal government's own limits of acceptable risk. Others have referred to the same region as "Death Alley".

Community leaders such as Sharon Lavigne have led the charge in protesting the expansion of the petrochemical industry in Cancer Alley, as well as addressing the associated racial and economic disparities.

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๐Ÿ”— Crimson Contagion

๐Ÿ”— United States/U.S. Government ๐Ÿ”— United States ๐Ÿ”— Medicine ๐Ÿ”— Medicine/Society and Medicine

Crimson Contagion was a simulation administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from January to August 2019 that tested the capacity of the U.S. federal government and twelve U.S. states to respond to a severe influenza pandemic originating in China. The exercise involves a scenario in which tourists returning from China spread a respiratory virus in the United States, beginning in Chicago. In less than two months the virus had infected 110 million Americans, killing more than half a million. The report issued at the conclusion of the exercise outlines the government's limited capacity to respond to a pandemic, with federal agencies lacking the funds, coordination, and resources to facilitate an effective response to the virus.

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๐Ÿ”— Therac-25

๐Ÿ”— Medicine

The Therac-25 was a computer-controlled radiation therapy machine produced by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) in 1982 after the Therac-6 and Therac-20 units (the earlier units had been produced in partnership with CGR of France).

It was involved in at least six accidents between 1985 and 1987, in which patients were given massive overdoses of radiation. Because of concurrent programming errors, it sometimes gave its patients radiation doses that were hundreds of times greater than normal, resulting in death or serious injury. These accidents highlighted the dangers of software control of safety-critical systems, and they have become a standard case study in health informatics and software engineering. Additionally the overconfidence of the engineers and lack of proper due diligence to resolve reported software bugs are highlighted as an extreme case where the engineers' overconfidence in their initial work and failure to believe the end users' claims caused drastic repercussions.

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๐Ÿ”— Retired Husband Syndrome

๐Ÿ”— Medicine ๐Ÿ”— Psychology ๐Ÿ”— Japan

Retired husband syndrome (ไธปไบบๅœจๅฎ…ใ‚นใƒˆใƒฌใ‚น็—‡ๅ€™็พค, Shujin Zaitaku Sutoresu Shoukougun, literally "One's Husband Being at Home Stress Syndrome") (RHS) is a psychosomatic stress-related illness which has been estimated to occur in 60% of Japan's older female population. It is a condition where a woman begins to exhibit signs of physical illness and depression as her husband reaches, or approaches, retirement.

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๐Ÿ”— Variolation

๐Ÿ”— Medicine ๐Ÿ”— Viruses

Variolation or inoculation was the method first used to immunize an individual against smallpox (Variola) with material taken from a patient or a recently variolated individual, in the hope that a mild, but protective, infection would result. The procedure was most commonly carried out by inserting/rubbing powdered smallpox scabs or fluid from pustules into superficial scratches made in the skin. The patient would develop pustules identical to those caused by naturally occurring smallpox, usually producing a less severe disease than naturally acquired smallpox. Eventually, after about two to four weeks, these symptoms would subside, indicating successful recovery and immunity. The method was first used in China and the Middle East before it was introduced into England and North America in the 1720s in the face of some opposition. The method is no longer used today. It was replaced by smallpox vaccine, a safer alternative. This in turn led to the development of the many vaccines now available against other diseases.

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๐Ÿ”— Spaced Repetition

๐Ÿ”— Medicine ๐Ÿ”— Psychology ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics/Applied Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Education

Spaced repetition is an evidence-based learning technique that is usually performed with flashcards. Newly introduced and more difficult flashcards are shown more frequently while older and less difficult flashcards are shown less frequently in order to exploit the psychological spacing effect. The use of spaced repetition has been shown to increase rate of learning.

Although the principle is useful in many contexts, spaced repetition is commonly applied in contexts in which a learner must acquire many items and retain them indefinitely in memory. It is, therefore, well suited for the problem of vocabulary acquisition in the course of second-language learning. A number of spaced repetition software programs have been developed to aid the learning process. Alternative names for spaced repetition include spaced rehearsal, expanding rehearsal, graduated intervals, repetition spacing, repetition scheduling, spaced retrieval and expanded retrieval.

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๐Ÿ”— Psychedelics in problem-solving experiment

๐Ÿ”— California ๐Ÿ”— California/San Francisco Bay Area ๐Ÿ”— Medicine ๐Ÿ”— Neuroscience ๐Ÿ”— Psychoactive and Recreational Drugs

Psychedelic agents in creative problem-solving experiment was a study designed to evaluate whether the use of a psychedelic substance with supportive setting can lead to improvement of performance in solving professional problems. The altered performance was measured by subjective reports, questionnaires, the obtained solutions for the professional problems and psychometric data using the Purdue Creativity, the Miller Object Visualization, and the Witkins Embedded Figures tests. This experiment was a pilot that was to be followed by control studies as part of exploratory studies on uses for psychedelic drugs, that were interrupted early in 1966 when the Food and Drug Administration declared a moratorium on research with human subjects, as a strategy in combating illicit use.

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๐Ÿ”— Semantic Satiation

๐Ÿ”— Medicine ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics ๐Ÿ”— Linguistics/Applied Linguistics

Semantic satiation is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds. Extended inspection or analysis (staring at the word or phrase for a lengthy period of time) in place of repetition also produces the same effect.

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๐Ÿ”— Locating a hospital by hanging meat around the city (981CE)

๐Ÿ”— Medicine ๐Ÿ”— Iran ๐Ÿ”— History of Science ๐Ÿ”— Middle Ages ๐Ÿ”— Islam ๐Ÿ”— Middle Ages/History ๐Ÿ”— Turkey

A bimaristan (Persian: ุจูŠู…ุงุฑุณุชุงู†โ€Ž, romanized:ย bฤซmฤrestฤn; Arabic: ุจููŠู’ู…ูŽุงุฑูุณู’ุชูŽุงู†โ€Ž, romanized:ย bฤซmฤristฤn), also known as dar al-shifa (also darรผลŸลŸifa in Turkish) or simply maristan, is a hospital in the historic Islamic world.

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