tagged w/ X-rays
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The first large study to examine the use of X-rays, CT scans and other medical radiation in children estimates the average child will get more than seven radiation scans by age 18, a potentially worrisome trend....
http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/ap/Health/76102The first large study to examine the use of X-rays, CT scans and other medical... more
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A new X-ray emitting object in the Milky Way has been recently announced by the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) team and the Swift satellite astronomers. MAXI, a JapanAerospace Exploration Agency supported instrument, monitors the entire sky in the X-ray portion of the spectrum from its perch on the International Space Station module “Kibo”. On October 12th, MAXI noticed nothing out of the ordinary in a portion of the sky in the constellation Centaurus.
On October 17th, however, things started to brighten up in the region but were still dark enough that the team wanted to analyze their observations before announcing it to the world. By the 20th, they were able to confirm the X-ray source as something more unusual, and sent out an Astronomer‘s Telegram (ATel No.2959) at 2:00 a.m. EDT alerting other astronomers to the object.
The Swift satellite – in keeping with its name – began taking observations a mere nine hours later. Swift is equipped with an X-ray telescope, as well as an optical/ultraviolet telescope, and is designed to maneuver quickly to home in on gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)
David Burrows, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and the lead scientist for Swift’s X-ray Telescope said in a press release, “The Swift observation suggests that this source is probably a neutron star or a black hole with a massive companion star located at a distance of a few tens of thousands of light years from Earth in the Milky Way…The contribution of Swift’s X-ray Telescope to this discovery is that it can swing into position rapidly to focus on a particular point in the sky and it can image the sky with high sensitivity and high spatial resolution.”
The object has been named MAXI J1409-619. The area of the sky that it was discovered in is not a known source of bright X-rays, though there were two dimmer objects located in the same area detected by the BeppoSAX X-ray survey on January 29th, 2000. One of the objects is consistent with the Swift observation, though this most recent flare-up made it almost 52 times brighter in the X-ray than previously observed.
X-ray novae are short-lived events, with an initial bright burst that falls off over a period of weeks or months. Their source is generally understood to be material falling into a black hole or accreting onto a neutron star.
This is not the first discovery made by the MAXI instrument. It detected another X-ray source on the 25th of September in the constellation Ophiuchus – named MAXI J1659-152.
http://www.universetoday.com/76559/another-x-ray-nova-detected-by-iss-swift/A new X-ray emitting object in the Milky Way has been recently announced by the... more
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A nationwide Armenian-American organized crime group has been charged with trying to steal more than $160 million from Medicare.(1)
Among those in custody is Armen Kazarian. The FBI calls him the vor, or godfather, of the operation and investigators say he’s the first vor ever arrested for racketeering in the U.S.
He and fellow members of the group set up phony health clinics and billed Medicare for treatments that were never performed.
The groups supposedly took advantage of the user-friendly side of Medicare. Medicare tries to pay health care providers promptly by not verifying whether treatments have actually been rendered before it sends money.
Any more groups taking advantage of Medicare?
How about unnecessary exposure to medical X-Rays?
read more at http://arch1design.com/blog/2010/10/15/x-rays-cancer-and-the-godfather/A nationwide Armenian-American organized crime group has been charged with trying to... more
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As we warned all along, airport tyranny is coming to your door...
As we warned at the beginning of the year, X-ray body scanners currently being used and abused in airports across the world are set to hit the streets as American Science & Engineering reveals that “more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents” have been sold to government agencies.
In January, we divulged how the ultimate end use of the body scanners would not be limited to airports, and that they were going to be rolled out on the streets as mobile units that would scan vehicles at checkpoints as well as individuals and crowds attending public events.
Dutch police announced that they were developing a mobile scanner that would “see through people’s clothing and look for concealed weapons” and that it would be used “as an alternative to random body searches in high risk areas”.
The device would also be used from a distance on groups of people “and mass scans on crowds at events such as football matches.”
The plans mirrored leaked documents out of the UK Home Office three years prior, which revealed that authorities in the UK were working on proposals to fit lamp posts with CCTV cameras that would X-ray scan passers-by and “undress them” in order to “trap terror suspects”.
Now, according to a Forbes report, backscatter x-ray vision devices mounted on trucks are already being deployed inside the United States to scan passing individuals and vehicles in complete violation of the Fourth Amendment.
American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold many of the devices to U.S. law enforcement agencies, who are already using them on the streets for “security” purposes.
“Without a warrant, the government doesn’t have a right to peer beneath your clothes without probable cause,” points out Marc Rotenberg, executive director of EPIC. “Even airport scans are typically used only as a secondary security measure. If the scans can only be used in exceptional cases in airports, the idea that they can be used routinely on city streets is a very hard argument to make.”
Watch a video demonstration of the device below.
“The TSA’s official policy dictates that full-body scans must be viewed in a separate room from any guards dealing directly with subjects of the scans, and that the scanners won’t save any images,” states the report. “Just what sort of safeguards might be in place for AS&E’s scanning vans isn’t clear, given that the company won’t reveal just which law enforcement agencies, organizations within the DHS, or foreign governments have purchased the equipment.”
However, as we reported right from the start and as was confirmed earlier this month, federal authorities have been storing checkpoint body scan images all along, proving that their claim that no images could be stored or transmitted was an act of mass public deception in order to grease the skids for the rapid introduction of the devices after the botched and highly suspicious underwear bomber incident.
As we have constantly reiterated, everything that we see unfolding in the airports is eventually designed to be used on the streets. People who had a blasé attitude about the privacy-busting body scanners, behavioral interrogations, and intrusive pat-downs occurring in airports on the basis that they could avoid them by not flying face a rude awakening once all this is in their face on a daily basis.
ody and vehicle scanners are just one tool authorities plan to implement on a widespread basis as part of our deepening decline into a hi-tech militarized police state.
Homeland Security is already implementing technology to be enforced at “security events” which purportedly reads “malintent” on behalf of an individual who passes through a checkpoint. The video below explains how “Future Attribute Screening Technology” (FAST) checkpoints will conduct “physiological” and “behavioral” tests in order to weed out suspected terrorists and criminals.
The clip shows individuals who attend “security events” being led into trailers before they are interrogated as to whether they are terrorists while lie detector-style computer programs analyze their physiological responses. The subjects are asked about their whereabouts, and if they are attempting to smuggle bombs or recording devices into the “expo,” proving that the technology is intended to be used at public events and not just airports. Individuals who do not satisfy the first lie detector-style test are then asked “additional questions”.As we warned all along, airport tyranny is coming to your door...
As we warned at the... more
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Created by a German ad firm to show off some high-def Japanese monitors for doctors, the photos that follow feature women in a total state of undress: You can see right through their clothes...and their skin. Man, doctors are kinky.
http://io9.com/5564263/x ray-pinups-boners-for-bones/gallery/Created by a German ad firm to show off some high-def Japanese monitors for doctors,... more
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This list contains some odd, weird and unbelievable X-Ray pictures that will put in in a tizzy.
They look unreal, but true. :http://www.mritechniciantraining.org/blog/2010/30-unbelievable-x-rays/This list contains some odd, weird and unbelievable X-Ray pictures that will put in in... more
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Urgent warnings by government experts about the risks of routinely using powerful CT scans to screen patients for colon cancer were brushed aside by the Food and Drug Administration.Urgent warnings by government experts about the risks of routinely using powerful CT... more
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Nick Veasey shows outsized X-ray images that reveal the otherworldly inner workings of familiar objects -- from the geometry of a wildflower to the anatomy of a Boeing 747. Producing these photos is dangerous and painstaking, but the reward is a superpower: looking at what the human eye can't see.Nick Veasey shows outsized X-ray images that reveal the otherworldly inner workings of... more
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The use of x-rays is rather commonplace these days, as they are used to see what is inside a person, and help medical professionals work out the best way to solve the problem. You’d be surprised, though, at the bizarre situations that many find themselves in.The use of x-rays is rather commonplace these days, as they are used to see what is... more
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People do weird things. And that includes what they eat. Whether it’s accident, some strange craving or kids being kids, humans have eaten a lot of strange, non-food objects. In some cases, the objects pass through the body without causing harm.
Link: http://becomeanxraytechnician.com/2009/25-oddest-objects-ever-eaten-by-humans/People do weird things. And that includes what they eat. Whether it’s accident,... more
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As an X-Ray technician, Greg McIntyre knows first hand about the frailty of the human body but as an up-and-coming Mixed Martial Arts fighter, Greg has diligently trained to damage the body in the octagon. In this pod vc2 producer Louis Pepiton hears from Greg about his work, his own battle with ulcerative colitis, the effect of MMA on the human body and attends Greg's first major MMA bout.As an X-Ray technician, Greg McIntyre knows first hand about the frailty of the human... more
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x-ray art like pictures
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photi
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2 years ago
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At least four million Americans under age 65 are exposed to high doses of radiation each year from medical imaging tests, according to a new study in The New England Journal of Medicine.
About 400,000 of those patients receive very high doses, more than the maximum annual exposure allowed for nuclear power plant employees or anyone else who works with radioactive material.
The paper, being published on Thursday, was based on a survey from 2005 to 2007 covering almost one million patients insured by UnitedHealthcare.
It did not estimate the number of cancer cases that the radiation might cause over the next several decades. But Dr. Rita Redberg, a cardiologist and researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who has extensively studied the use of medical imaging, said it would probably result in tens of thousands of additional cancers.
Each individual patient is at relatively minor additional risk from the tests, Dr. Redberg said, but because they are given to so many people, the cumulative risk is significant.
“It’s certain that there are increased rates of cancer at low levels of radiation, and as you increase the levels of radiation, you increase cancer,” said Dr. Redberg, who was not connected with the new study.
The radioactive tests are given for hundreds of purposes. In the last two decades, they have become especially common in cardiology, where physicians use them to check for the buildup of plaque in the arteries and the heart’s ability to pump blood.
Some cardiologists now encourage their patients to have routine heart scans even if they do not have clinical symptoms of heart disease, like chest pain or shortness of breath. The study did not examine what percentage of the tests were medically necessary.
The use of the tests has risen sharply in the last two decades, as more and more physicians have bought CT and PET scanners and installed them in or near their offices. In 2007, the Department of Health and Human Services estimated that the number of CT scans given to Medicare patients had almost quadrupled from 1995 to 2005, while the number of PET scans had risen even faster.
The new study’s lead author, Dr. Reza Fazel, a cardiologist at Emory University, said the use of scans appeared to have increased even from 2005 to 2007, the period covered by the paper.
“These procedures have a cost, not just in terms of dollars, but in terms of radiation risk,” Dr. Fazel said.
The researchers calculated the amount of radiation received by the patients by looking at insurance codes for various kinds of imaging tests. Exposure is measured in millisieverts; the average American receives about three millisieverts a year from all sources.
The paper found that in at least one of the three years, 1.9 percent of the UnitedHealthcare patients received at least 20 millisieverts of radiation, or nearly seven times the average. Of that group, about 10 percent, or 0.2 percent of all patients, received at least 50 millisieverts, more than the annual maximum that nuclear regulators allow.
Those figures suggest that about four million Americans receive cumulative doses exceeding 20 millisieverts a year.
Federal rules allow physicians to profit from the use of machines they own or lease. But Dr. Harlan M. Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale and an author of the paper, said financial incentives were only part of the reason the number of tests had risen so fast.
“I think the central driver is more about culture than anything else,” Dr. Krumholz said. “People use imaging instead of examining the patient; they use imaging instead of talking to the patient.
“Patients should be asking the question: ‘Do I really need this test? Is the information in this test going to help in the decision-making process?’ ”
In many cases, there is little evidence that the routine use of scans helps physicians make better decisions, especially in cases where the treatments that follow are also of questionable efficacy.
In an editorial:At least four million Americans under age 65 are exposed to high doses of radiation... more
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mae37
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2 years ago
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Ancient fossilised, spider-like species have been imaged in 3D using thousands of X-ray scans and imaging software.Ancient fossilised, spider-like species have been imaged in 3D using thousands of... more
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Imagine having a head ache for 38 years... Well you'd probably stop noticing it after the first week..!?Imagine having a head ache for 38 years... Well you'd probably stop noticing it... more
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thepsm
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2 years ago
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From prisoners with light bulbs up their bottoms to poor kids that have swallowed Magnetix - here's fifteen of the most bizarre x-rays you'll ever see.From prisoners with light bulbs up their bottoms to poor kids that have swallowed... more
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Proving work and pleasure can be mixed, x-ray technician "Reintji" has created a Flickr slideshow packed with images of the insides of console controllers, games cartridges and, er, a coconut.Proving work and pleasure can be mixed, x-ray technician "Reintji" has... more
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richjm
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2 years ago
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The images in this post are somewhat disturbing, so be warned. Miraculously, all of the patients in these x-ray's survived, with most making complete recoveries.The images in this post are somewhat disturbing, so be warned. Miraculously, all of... more
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