The NY Times reports that with the removal of the asterisk indicating extended time and other accommodations given to SAT test takers, business is up for doctors who test for learning disabled students. Legitimate requests have risen, but there are also parents and students looking for an extra edge. Some will shop around until they get the diagnoses they want. And these don’t come cheap, $2,400 for tests and an evaluation. Students without that money and in lower income schools that can’t afford to provide disability testing may not be able to even get legitimate evaluations. The College Board doesn’t think this is any worse than inequities of schools not being able to afford new textbooks. But parents and teachers can creatively overcome things like lack of school supplies. How do they get their own edge on those who can afford to cheat on a diagnosis?

Scan Scam?
If you live in an area where companies selling “whole-body scans” have arrived, you’ve probably heard the ads offering peace of mind and early detection of illnesses. They often feature testimonials from customers who credit the scans with saving their lives. San Francisco doctor Alan Eshleman has a problem with these “whole-body scanners”. In fact, he thinks they are worse scammers than the telephone psychic who told his patient that he had a deadly lung disease. His supporting facts? There is little evidence that these CT scans really catch early signs of disease, nor do they necessarily offer peace of mind. The reports provided with the scan results tend to not be absolutely reassuring since they don’t want to rule out any possible problems. So the patient is referred to their doctor for followup work on the “questionable” size of a cyst or “unexplained” density in the liver. A few hundreds or thousands of dollars of more tests later (perhaps, if they are lucky, paid by insurance but then also contributing to the rising costs of health care), the patient maybe has their peace of mind.

However, in my opinion, the fact which beats out any of the other negatives or benefits is this: “the radiation dose delivered during a whole-body scan is hundreds of times greater than that of a single chest X ray. […] People who receive a whole body scan every few years as ‘preventative medicine’ actually increase their chances of getting a radiation-induced cancer.” The FDA is looking into these scans for preventative screening purposes, and it’s possible they may see them in a more positive light than Dr. Eshleman does, but, as I always advocate, be informed.

It’s a nice change of pace to go on vacation and read charming stories in the local paper such as this: Dog gone … found two miles out to sea. Block Island resident Boo Boo, a 3-year-old Staffordshire terrier who enjoys chasing sea gulls into the waves, was caught in a rip tide and disappeared. She was discovered two miles offshore, despite dense fog, by a surprised fisherman. She had been doggie paddling for about an hour and a half. Boo Boo has been reunited with her owner, a jewelry designer who is now making her pet a tag in the event of future escapades.

Fresh Air’s Terry Gross is profiled by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Her interviews are typically done long-distance, and her producer says that “makes it more intimate and interesting for the listener.” It also reduces self-consciousness for both the interviewer and interviewee. Gross does not warm up her subjects, preferring to let the rapport grow while they are on the air. Also noted in the article: Car Talk has the most listeners per hour of the NPR shows. (via Media News)

Authors and Books for Children contains articles on some of my favorite books, including an informative biography on Helen Dore Boylston who drew on her own nursing experience to write the Sue Barton series, a bit on the Betsy-Tacy series, and a comparison of two editions of a Nancy Drew mystery. There are also links to online books (etexts) including those of Thornton W. Burgess.

In the third book in the Sue Barton series, our heroine, fresh from nursing school, joins the Henry Street Nurses in New York City. When I originally read the book I had little interest in researching what realities the plot may have been based on. Now my curiosity regarding whether the Henry Street Settlement and founder Lillian Wald, who makes a brief but memorable appearance in the story, actually exist is quickly satisfied with a web search. Lillian Wald started the Visiting Nurses Service in 1893 after realizing there was a need for public health nursing and education within the New York tenement community. The group of nurses from the Henry Street house were well established by the time the fictional Sue Barton joined up in the 1930s. While there are happy endings to most of the cases Sue tends to, I would say that the book does not glamourize the conditions and hardships that these nurses had to contend with in providing care in impoverished households. The Visiting Nurse Service of New York still exists today and their web site, with its historical photo gallery, shows that they are well aware of their heritage.

Marketing in the form of branding comes to your local plant nursery. There’s a big market of gardeners out there and nurseries are taking advantage of the tried and true results of renaming generic products to make them more attractive to consumers. Resilient Jewels, Lasting Jewels, Hot Jewels, Cool Jewels, Superbells, Superbena, Supertunia. Thank goodness these plants come with more than marketing-speak names and pretty packaging; many also include instructions on their care and feeding, with more information available on company websites. Like everything else that gets branded, it’s all about introducing consumers to convenience.

A Massachusetts cat was in a tree for eighteen days before being rescued by an Animal Rescue League worker trained in tree climbing by an arborist. (thanks Jen!)

The folks at The Undetectables, a company that helps mobile phone companies in the U.K. camouflage their cell antennas, used to build sets and scenery for Aardman Animations, the makers of Wallace and Gromit. (via Slashdot)

Logitech’s new IO pen captures your handwriting but doesn’t include handwriting recognition software. It stores what you write with the pen in an image format that you can then attach to documents or just keep around for reference. Although I type faster than I can write and have almost mastered Palm’s Graffiti (after several years of sporadic training), I still like to scribble out notes in many cases instead of using electronic text. It allows me to be expressive and use more graphical information (arrows, many underlines for emphasis), plus the doodling helps me think. I’m not sure I need it in electronic format, but if I could somehow search all those scribbles later for things I jotted down, that could be worth the switch from paper. (via evhead)